The LVN Meltdown

Well it was 14 December and the FNGers were over in force. From Left to right you have: John, Fred, Mike, Bob, Paul (From Montreal), Stan, Joel, Jim and Ron. By the smiles on their faces, it looks like they had a good time running trains and kabitzing.

An hour and a half into the session, we had a melt down and the loco net started to send out random signals. It got to the point that the five operations came to a halt and we went to digitrax diagnosis. We purged the system, Had to re-address half the power and reconsist everything.

By then the boys were into coffee, tea, pop, beer, cheese curds and cake. Conversations were enthusiastic about railroading in the Kettle Valley and I got unsolicited offers for a book of ink sketches from that area. Not for sale:)

After we got things up and running again, a few of the boys began to operate some more as the challenge of the Richmond yard time saver got them pack to the puzzle. And Jim had to get back to his local freight in Shelby.

Mike Hamer brought over a few of his new craftsman structures. Karl from Surrey Custom Models produced a great kit called "Morty's Market" . He placed it along with the Bar Mills Shackpack in among the scenes so we could all appreciate the work and learn from his mistakes...Ha Ha ...I mean his great work.

All in all it was a great learning experience and I gleaned a lot about digitrax issues. I had added four new plug in terminals since the last running session and I think it stretched the loconet power supply to the max. Ron had provided valuable insight into specific wiring upgrades to fix the problem and I will work with him over the holidays to improve the situation before the next full operating session.