Larry,

The belt line looks great.

Quote from: PRR Modeler on Today at 10:26:40 AMRon I looked at those when I was building my layout and was worried about their durability and hooking the plastic rod to the fascia, being not very mechanically inclined.

Curt,

I bought them when Fast Tracks first came out with them and I bought enough to do all the turnouts on my layout.  That was before I got into servos and planetary stepper motors.  I used the plastic rod method for the turnouts that were not parallel to the fascia and used  0.093 rod (with a 4-40 threaded ends) for the turnouts that are parallel to the fascia

I have been happy with their operation.

Quote from: deemery on Today at 09:21:56 AM

Quote from: elwoodblues on July 14, 2026, 09:02:24 PM

Quote from: deemery on July 14, 2026, 10:35:08 AMRon, how did that switch machine fail?  A piece of plastic broke?  General disintegration of the plastic? 

dave

Dave,

The Bullfrog Switch Machine is made from wood that you get to assemble.



The assembly holding the throw rod de-laminated.  I assembled a new one to replace it.  I did manage to glue the original one back together, so I have an assembled spare for future use.

"de-laminated" - that sounds like a materiel failure.  Tim should send you a replacement for free...  Seriously, you should let him know about that.

dave

Dave,

De-laminated was probably the "wrong" word.  The pieces separated.  It was one of the first ones I assembled and after review I'm classifying it as "builder Error" as I "might" missed a glue joint. 

Quote from: Philip on Today at 08:57:04 AMRepairs are sometime mind soothing! Carry on!  

Philip

Thanks Philip.

And sometimes repairs can be a real pain.    Fortunately the repairs were not the pain kind. 

Quote from: Rick on Today at 08:22:14 AMRon, great news on the layout clean up and maintenance.
I hope there will be updates on new layout progress soon.

Thanks Rick,

There will be layout updates soon, I have incentives.    I'm part of a model railroad tour in mid-October, I have a deadline.

Good morning everyone,

Thanks for the coffee and breakfast Larry.

Happy birthday Karl and Mike.

Current temperature is 22c (72f) and overcast with thunderstorms predicted for later today, same forecast as yesterday except that the thunderstorms didn't arrive till last night.

Didn't make it downstairs last night so nothing got done on the layout.  We shall see what tonight brings.

Have a great day everyone.

Quote from: Mark Dalrymple on July 14, 2026, 04:18:28 PMWell done Ron, on cleaning out the room and all that organising/ sorting.  A huge job, I am sure, and one I need to tackle.  My problem is the inability to throw things out!  I hope the motivation and enjoyment comes back tenfold!

Cheers, Mark.

Mark, it was a huge job and discouraging one when I started the process.  It was well worth it in the end.

Quote from: deemery on July 14, 2026, 10:35:08 AMRon, how did that switch machine fail?  A piece of plastic broke?  General disintegration of the plastic? 

dave

Dave,

The Bullfrog Switch Machine is made from wood that you get to assemble.



The assembly holding the throw rod de-laminated.  I assembled a new one to replace it.  I did manage to glue the original one back together, so I have an assembled spare for future use.

Rob,

The boat is looking great, can't wait to see the finished product.

The Cost of Deferred Maintenance.

How is that for a catchy update title. 

When I finished the last project I was on in Florida last year I decided that I was done working on the road, I have done it long enough and I wasn't getting the same satisfaction I was getting from earlier projects.  After checking, the last time I really worked on the layout was 2013.  Thinking back, I was probably home maybe 12 to 15 months total during that time.  Unfortunately, during that time the layout room slowly turned into what I can politely call a storage room with "stuff" all over the layout and floor.

Since I have been home, I've avoided the train room like the plague.  Instead of dealing with it, I started building the west end staging yard in an adjacent room, built a small fleet of boxcars and taking part in the winter challenge.  I am getting to the point where I need to tie in the staging yard to the main layout and I needed to finally address the issue.

Since the challenge I have slowly cleaned out the layout room, and clearing off the layout.  The hard part was finding permanent homes for everything and quite frankly a lot of the stuff ended up in the trash, but now everything has a home.

Now the fun begins . . . . 

The first step was vacuum the layout, I think the spiders thought they had a permanent home when the eviction notice went out.   The vacuuming took an evening.  The next step was firing up the DCC system.  When I flipped the switch it instantly registered a short.  Fortunately the layout has been divided into 3 districts (the 4th district will be the west end staging yard) which makes localizing the area of the short easier.  The short was found at the crossing in Mosquito Flats.  It seems the 2" thick foam base had sagged a little and closed on of the gaps.  Not sure if just sagged over time of if the weight of the "stuff" on the layout at the location caused the sag.    Probably a little of both.  This was easily solved by adding a support under the foam base to eliminate the sag.

Now that the short was eliminated I tested the manual turnouts to make sure that all still work.  My manual turnouts on the layout are controlled by Bullfrog Switch Machines made by Fast Tracks.  There are mounted on a 1" x 2" x 1/4" wood base which is glued to the foam using 5-minute epoxy.  As one would expect they all worked flawlessly except for one of them.  The one that didn't work was sticking and I apparently used a little too much force and literally ripped it off the layout.  The good news is that the 5-minute epoxy didn't fail.  The bad news is there is now a divot in the foam board where the switch machine base was.

After looking at the Bullfrog switch machine, it contained "structural damage".  Rather than repair it, I decided to replace it.  I still have a bunch of them as the original plan was to add them to all the turnouts on the layout.  That plan has changed since I started playing with servos and more recently, planetary stepper motors.   I reused the same base plate to mount the new switch machine to the layout.  I installed the new switch machine last night using 5-minute epoxy.
Hopefully the last step will be cleaning the track and then I can run trains again. 

Thanks for looking in.

Quote from: Jerry on July 12, 2026, 10:50:04 AMVery nice Ron.

And a nice storage shelf.

Jerry

Thanks Jerry.

Good morning everyone,

Thanks for the coffee and breakfast Curt.

Current weather is 24c (75f) and overcast with thunderstorms in the forecast for this afternoon.

Dis more maintenance work on the layout yesterday and mounted the replacement turnout machine in the layout.  hopefully the last step will be cleaning the rail. 

Have a great day everyone.

Good morning everyone.

Thanks for the coffee and breakfast Rick, trains are not running yet but soon. 

Current temperature is 23c (73f) and cloudy with thunderstorms in the forecast later today.

After errands and chores yesterday I managed to make it downstairs.  It seems 13 years of neglect causes issues to arise.    Firing up the DCC system (it still works, YEA) produced an immediate short, fortunately the layout is currently broken up in 3 power districts so that narrowed down the search area.  It seems that the foam base under the crossing has developed a little bit of a sag that closed a gap on the crossing.  I was able to solve this by adding a support under the affected area.  The next step was testing out the manual turnout controls.  The manual turnouts on my layout are controlled by bullfrog switch machines made by Fast Tracks.  They all still worked except for one which was jammed and ripped itself from the layout when I tried to operate it.     It was glued to the foam using 5-minute epoxy.  After looking at it, I decided to replace it entirely so I spent some time building another one, which I hope to install tonight, at least that is the plan right now.  Apparently deferred maintenance is not great for model railways either. 

Have a great day everyone.

Mike,

The wheels look great.  I plan to buy a couple of those model T's and will have to remember the mandrel trick.

Quote from: Michael Hohn on July 12, 2026, 07:05:19 PMRon,

Very classy fleet of cars.  Well done.

Mike

Thanks Mike.