richhotrainSorry to have to say, this sounds like a very undisciplined group of guys.
I would rather suggest that they are untrained (pardon the pun). The club has not had a layout where operations could be performed for years. Both the portable layout and the permanent layout at the old clubhouse only went around in circles. The guys who are causing the problems either don't have layouts at home or they are lone wolf operators so they haven't had any experience running with other trains on the same track.
I will take part of the blame for the continuing operating problems because I have taken a more or less hands off approach to the operating sessions. I had hoped that people would figure things out on their own, but obviously that is not happening. My hope now is that if a couple of us spend our time during the operating sessions closely watching those who are running trains and need coaching, that we can solve the problems through education before I have to get out the big guns.
As far as monetary fines are concerned, IMHO that is going too far. I guess I see it as more of a 'carrot' as opposed to a 'stick' approach. If a member was to get to the point where they were causing constant problems over a significant time period (i.e. several months) and not responding to our requests, then we would terminate their membership. I don't want to threaten the whole club with that sort of penalty when most people are not causing any problems at all. To me, that just puts a damper on the whole thing and that is not the way we want to run the club.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
snjroyDave, I know your club did not go forward with Wifi but the lesson may benefit to other readers.
Actually, we installed Wifi about three weeks ago and we already have several people who are using it and love it! Set up was quick, easy and not expensive, and it only takes a few minutes to teach people how to use it once they have the app on their devices.
snjroyHard rules and penalties don't work at our local club.
Hard rules go against my nature and I'm not entirely comfortable with making threats, so I'm hoping that if a couple of us spend a few weeks closely monitoring the operating sessions we can educate those who need to improve their skills before push comes to shove. However, there are a couple of guys who just haven't gotten the message despite repeatedly causing the same problems. When things get to the point where those people are significantly and regularly interfering with operating sessions, they have to be told to get off the tracks. If we can't run trains properly why have we just spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours building a layout?
Hard rules and penalties don't work at our local club. I "solved" that problem by following my trains, I mean physically walking close to them, and watching out for forgotten switches, wild running trains and debris on the track. We installed the Wifi at our club and following my train closely is not a problem. Dave, I know your club did not go forward with Wifi but the lesson may benefit to other readers.
Simon
Sorry to have to say, this sounds like a very undisciplined group of guys. Why not imposes monetary penalties, say $25 for the first infraction, $50 for second infracton, $100 for the third infraction. A fourth infraction would result in suspension from the club. That would get their attention.
Rich
Alton Junction
rrinker Stinks, but you have to be hard nosed about it.
Hi Randy,
Yup!! Hard nosed is right. I'm usually a pretty easy going guy but I have to control my temper when someone is being stupid. It will be interesting to hear the silence in the room when I tell the first person to please take their train off the layout!
I rewrote the operating rules tonight. The original version done in October of 2018 was very long winded (as I tend to be) and not to the point. The revised version has eight very short paragraphs that address each of the issues directly, and it spells out the consequences of failing to follow the rules very clearly.
I have had enough of asking "who is running this train?".
Stinks, but you have to be hard nosed about it. That $300 loco might not be a $1200 brass loco, but it wasn't chump change to the owner when it gets damaged because someone else was too busy chatting instead of paying attention to the train they were allegedly running. Someone not paying attention and damaging only their OWN equipment, well, that's a bit like justice served, but damaging someone else's property never goes over well and is very much against forming a brotherhood of club members.
Accidents are one thing - but walking away from a running train and not watching where it's headed is no accident.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Hi gang!
We have decided to use JMRI's basic operating system to set up proper operations. Up until now our 'operating nights' have involved watching trains go around. Unfortunately, those sessions have demonstrated that many of our members simply don't understand how to run a train!
For example, they will leave their trains running free while they stop to chat, and then they will go into panic mode when people start to holler because their train is about to collide with another train or it has derailed because a turnout was thrown against them. He have had frequent incidents where someone has had to grab a locomotive before it hit something, and the operator was nowhere to be seen.
Or, they don't look ahead of their trains to see what is coming down the track, and then they panic when they realize they are a few feet away from a collision, of which there have been several.
They also can't tell which route their train is going to take when going through a turnout, that is if they bother to look at the turnouts at all. They can't remember to set the mainline turnouts back after they take a siding as well.
The worst part is that they seem to be incapable of negotiating with each other for right of way or which route they want to take. We will cure the right of way issue, at least partly, by giving all north bound trains priority. That will create a whole new raft of headaches because 'northbound' on the track doesn't always conform to 'north' on the compass.
Our solution will be to run a bunch of sessions with a couple of guys acting more or less as dispatchers. However, instead of telling everyone where to go and who goes first, they will be watching for behaviours which cause the above problems. They will then tell the offender to stop their train and figure out what they should be doing. Repeated failures to operate properly will result in the person being told to take their train off of the layout.
Are we having fun yet?!?
hon30critterPlease don't hold back! Be honest with what you think.
.
Don't worry about it.
Anything that looks wronf after scenery is in place can easily be hidden with enough Woodland Scenics clump foliage.
I have never made a mastake so big that it could not be hidden by something.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
I think the shaper sheet is fine. It's a base layer. You put enough top dressing on it, and most of the lines will disappear, especially if it gets covered with trees. Below the tracks though, I agree with you. Time for a re-do.
Mike
Here are a couple of shots of the Woodland Scenics Shaper Sheets in place. I'm not entirely happy with the texture. I think I shrunched the sheets up too tightly so there are too many lines and creases. Ultimately almost all of it will be covered with either trees or rock molds so I probably shouldn't be concerned. The logging road on the right in the first picture turned out quite well if I may say so myself. You can see where the lower parts of the road have been cut into the foam. I had a better picture of it but alas it disappeared into the ether. Sorry, the first shot is a bit blurry. I have a really hard time holding my iPhone steady.
Here is a picture of the mountain in place. I messed up a little bit with the size of the first sheet but that will be easily corrected with some scraps. Just so you know, nobody is happy with the scenery below the track including the guys who installed it. It just looks totally fake and it will be redone.
Please don't hold back! Be honest with what you think.
Thanks,
Got about 60 HO scale searchlight signal head basic assemblies made tonight. They still require a lot of filing to finish them before they can be added to the signals. Thank goodness for Dremel tools and diamond wheel cutters, but I am covered in brass filings!
I had designed a somewhat more prototypical signal head with a smaller diameter lens and shade but I decided that the additional steps required were not worth the effort to reduce the lens diameter by 1/32". Everyone is happy with the prototype with the slightly larger lens so why complicate things?
Cheers!!
hon30critterIf you need low weight hydrocal castings, PM me, i have a way to do them. rrebell Sometimes the traditional ways are better. I use plaster cloth, very cheap from some places Hi rrebell, We are using plaster cloth over foam and/or wire mesh for most of the layout where the scenery will be fixed in place and is easily reached from the aisles. I am using the Shaper Sheets on the mountains in the center of the peninsula that are too far from the aisles to work on in place. Since they have to be lifted out to do all the scenery work I wanted to keep them as light as possible. So far so good. There will only be a few hydrocal rock castings on them. The majority of the surface will be covered with trees. Dave
rrebell Sometimes the traditional ways are better. I use plaster cloth, very cheap from some places
Hi rrebell,
We are using plaster cloth over foam and/or wire mesh for most of the layout where the scenery will be fixed in place and is easily reached from the aisles. I am using the Shaper Sheets on the mountains in the center of the peninsula that are too far from the aisles to work on in place. Since they have to be lifted out to do all the scenery work I wanted to keep them as light as possible. So far so good. There will only be a few hydrocal rock castings on them. The majority of the surface will be covered with trees.
rrebellSometimes the traditional ways are better. I use plaster cloth, very cheap from some places
Sometimes the traditional ways are better. I use plaster cloth, very cheap from some places or free at some medical places, with a foam base made out os free foam from packing material.
I had my first experience with Woodland Scenic's Shaper Sheet last Tuesday night. Shaper Sheet is a heavy aluminum foil with a cotton like covering on one side. It is an easy and quick way to cover large areas of terrain with something that gives a decent resemblance of a rocky surface. Here is the WS listing:
https://woodlandscenics.woodlandscenics.com/show/item/C1179
Here is a quick demo:
https://woodlandscenics.woodlandscenics.com/show/video/shapersheetdemo
I'll get some pictures of it next Tuesday. My fingers were too mucked up with the PL300 adhesive to attempt to use my phone to take pictures. By the way, PL300 is way overkill for gluing the stuff down. I used it because I had lots of it on hand. Model Railroader used hot glue on their Canadian Canyons layout. I am a little skeptical of using hot glue if you are working with larger pieces of Shaper Sheet. I think that the likelyhood of the glue cooling off before everything is in place is rather high. If you use something like PL300 or acrylic caulking you will need lots of push pins to hold the sheets down while the glue sets.
Here is the Canadian Canyons episode on using Shaper Sheet:
http://mrv.trains.com/how-to/scenery/2018/02/canadian-canyons-series-part-31--surfacing-with-shaper-sheet
Some pros and cons:
Pro - Everyone at the club said they liked the look. It is easy to work with. The only potential mess is getting glue or caulking on your fingers, which I can't seem to avoid.
Con - It is expensive and it doesn't go far! The sheets are only 6 ft long x 18" wide (also comes 9" wide). Peeling the fabric back to make seams is a bit of a PITA.
We held our first Show Committee meeting for next February's Train Show and Sale. We must be getting better at setting the show up. The meeting lasted 50 minutes. Three years ago when most of the committee was new it took us many hours to get to the same point.
There are still some details to look after of course. Most of those have to do with the venue. We will be in a different area of the greenhouse complex so we have to verify things like where the entrance/exit can go and that there are outlets where we need them.
I know, I know. Boring post!! At least I didn't blather on forever.
rrebellHope you document the wiring, otherwise you are asking for it.
rrebell,
Oh ye of little faith! Rest assured that we have documented the wiring very carefully! In fact, we started the wiring documentation well before we started installing the wires. We have a very well defined wiring colour system. A couple of the colours are duplicated but in those cases there is an obvious difference in the gauge of the wires from one bus to another.
Our wiring has gone very smoothly. We have had a couple of track feeders attached to the wrong rails. We installed more than 200 feeder wires so making a couple of goofs was understandable. We had one Tortoise common lead fall out of its connection strip. The result of that was that a few of the Tortoises down stream were moving very slowly, but only in one direction. That caused us to scratch our heads for a while but thanks to the forums we were able to figure out what was going wrong and we were then able to locate the problem in a few minutes.
richhotrainDave, photos of your progress are never boring. Keep those photos coming. Rich
I agree with Rich, Dave. I've always checked in on your thread.
Those signals look great!
Mike.
My You Tube
Hi Brian and rrebell,
The wiring is very easy to follow. We established a colour scheme before we started. We have only had one problem where a common (yellow) wire dropped out of one of the connector strips for a Tortoise. Once we figured out what we were looking for it took less than five minutes to find the problem.
I will admit that things would be prettier if all the wires were running exactly parallel and without any sags, but in reality that is simply not necessary. The wiring works. No further comment needed.
Hope you document the wiring, otherwise you are asking for it. On my last layout wiring was pretty simple as all runs were short to buss wires and connected with posi-taps. easy to add wires anywhere, no wire damage and trouble shooting was a breese (had to do that once on that layout).
It's not as neat as some others' work, but the main point is that it does work! We have only have one incident where the wiring went astray, and that was when one of the Tortoise power supply commons came loose. I'd say that our wiring guru Dave (not me) has done a pretty good job.
Of course I'm sure many of out layouts look like this.
Brian
My Layout Plan
Interesting new Plan Consideration
hon30critter richhotrain Dave. Where did you get your ladders? Hi Rich, The ladders and platforms are from Tomar Industries.
richhotrain Dave. Where did you get your ladders?
Hi Rich,
The ladders and platforms are from Tomar Industries.
richhotrainDave. Where did you get your ladders?
The ladders and platforms are from Tomar Industries. I also have stand offs for the ladders but they prevent the ladders from standing at a slight angle which I think looks better than having them straight up and down. I'm going to try reversing the platforms so that the short side of the platform is next to the ladder. That should allow the ladder to sit on an angle with the stand offs in place.
The finials are from Scale Structures.
richhotrain hon30critter There is the latest! I hope you are not too bored! Dave, photos of your progress are never boring. Keep those photos coming. Rich
hon30critter There is the latest! I hope you are not too bored!
There is the latest!
I hope you are not too bored!
Dave, photos of your progress are never boring. Keep those photos coming.
Looking good, Dave. Where did you get your ladders?
As requested, here are a few pictures of the layout progress:
This is the first attempt at scratchbuilding HO scale signals (I'm also working on some N scale versions of the same thing for a friend). I didn't have exact measurements when I started this project so I guessed at the size and height. Thanks to Ed (gmpullman) I now have the proper dimensions so the subsequent signals will be closer to scale. This one isn't far off but it is about 1 1/2' taller and the heads are a bit too far apart. The sunshades are a little oversized but I have figured out how to correct that problem. The camera has washed out the LEDs. In actual fact the colours are good but the green could be a bit more 'green':
Here is the mounting system. The perf board is designed for Arduino applications but it suits this purpose nicely:
I said some time ago that I thought that posting pictures of the wiring would be boring, but just in case someone really needs to see the situation under the layout, here you go:
On another front, we held our Annual General Meeting on Tuesday night. Not much to report. I was acclaimed as the President as were the other members of the Executive to their respective positions. We agreed to a modest increase in our annual dues. They will go up to $270.00/year in September of 2020. There was some questioning of why we need to increase the dues. The basic answer is that the club has spent a fair portion of our assets building the new layout and the Executive feels that we should replenish those assets over time. I made the point that if we don't build our reserves back up and we have a poor show outcome because of bad weather (the show is in Barrie, Ontario in mid February) we could end up short of cash. Two bad shows in a row could kill the club. I made it very clear that as the President I will not take the risk of having to tell the members down the road that the club is broke. Fortunately, the naysayers backed down.
Well, this is certainly unusual! I haven't posted to this thread in two weeks! I apologise if any of you have suffered withdrawal symptoms, as if!
Not much to report. We held two invitation only open houses on the past two Tuesdays. On the first Tuesday we had lots of guests and I had a great time talking with them. One lady, who is the mother of one of our younger members, was enthralled by what she saw. I don't think she realized how complex her son's chosen hobby is. She asked numerous questions and even took a minute to look under the layout to see all the wiring. When she stood up the expression on her face suggested that she was amazed. All the other guests were very enthusiastic as well. It was a good night.
I didn't make it to the second Tuesday. We only had one guest. That was largely due to the fact that I had to cancel the invitations that I had made to several people because of Dianne's recent head injury (details in the Diner if you are interested). However, I am told that the evening was by no means a bust. Lots of guys had brought trains to run and apparently they had a ball. Most notably, the guys were communicating with each other very well so that there were no cornfield meets despite the fact that we had trains running in both directions on the mainline. That was a first! There is hope after all!!!
Next Tuesday is our Annual General Meeting. We have a ton of stuff to cover. One of the changes that we will make that I am very happy with is that we will now explain and discuss any motions for changes to the club's rules before we vote on them. In the past all we were doing is sending emails with the proposed motions to the members and expecting everyone to have read them before the monthly business meetings. That simply wasn't working. We were asking the members to bring a motion forward and lots of people were putting up their hands who had almost no understanding of the motion at all. It was a farce. Don't ask me how we got into that rut. We have decided that from now on the members of the Executive Committee will take turns introducing and explaining the motions before they are put to a vote. Just plain common sense.
One of the things that we will be announcing is that the club's annual membership dues will be going up by $40.00 per year. I am anticipating a bit of flack on that because it represents a 16% increase over the previous year's dues of $230.00. Note that the dues have not increased since at least 2013. We have a few members who apparently have no clue as to what it takes to keep the club alive financially and who have vowed in the past that if the dues go up they will be out of there. Um, $270.00 per year? We are not asking for a fortune. In fact our dues are dirt cheap by comparison to other clubs in the area. However, to soften the blow the increase in dues will not take place until September 2020. I'll have to bite my tongue if anyone complains!
One other issue we are addressing is the dues for members who are absent for a significant part of the year, i.e. the snowbirds. One of those members objected strongly to paying full dues if he was only there for six months. Initially we gave into him, but none of the Executive were happy with the decision. We finally managed to find our cahunas and reverse the decision. The club exists 12 months of the year. We pay rent and insurance for 12 months of the year. To add to the lunacy, the snowbirds are always down south when we hold our annual show and sale in February. That show pays our bills! To not be there for the show and still expect a discount on your membership fees is ludicrous. Thankfully the discount seeker backed down.
This post is getting to be too long. I'll stop.
rrebellHey, it is all about you. You have leadership in your veins.
Thanks, I guess. Sometimes I'm not sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing!
I do have a great outlet for my occasional frustrations. That is my wife, Dianne. For years I patiently listened to her relieve the pressures of her job. She was the Administrator (head honcho) for a 100 bed Long Term Care facility. She had 200 people working for her, including union members, and some of the residents' family members could be brutal. We would sit at the dining room table after supper while she vented, often for close to an hour. She owes me!
hon30critter Well, I must be doing something that people are interested in! As of right now this thread has been viewed 60064 times and there are more than 800 posts. Okay, I'll admit it. A significant percentage of the posts are mine. Too much to say I guess. Seriously, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to all of those who have helped me both on this thread and several others. My club is building a layout that we can be proud of with your help! Thank you!! Dave
Well, I must be doing something that people are interested in! As of right now this thread has been viewed 60064 times and there are more than 800 posts.
Okay, I'll admit it. A significant percentage of the posts are mine. Too much to say I guess.
Seriously, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to all of those who have helped me both on this thread and several others. My club is building a layout that we can be proud of with your help!
Thank you!!