March 25th Checking and Rechecking

Post date: Mar 29, 2010 12:15:35 AM

This week was checking and rechecking before we move on. As the Sue Line team went over the conversions and studied the concept of islands which are turnouts within a block and how they are wired for detection in a DCC system. The blocks make up a zone and the zones make up the railroad.

Above you can see Rodney Dixon (foreground) and Ken Ellison (back of Rodney) watching a the first trains ran into Underworld-The storage yard under Robinson and Sue City. All went well, but more work was discovered.

Work could be found eveywhere as Ron Brannon (above, left, blue shirt) helps and supervises Ken Ellison (above, left, red shirt) on entering the information about Underworld into the JMRI data base.

Discussion were the item of the day also as David Colvin (above, center, red shirt) shows something to Radney Dixon (above, center, gray shirt) and Mose Crews (above, center, white cap) and Paul Harwell (above, center, far back, orange cap).

There was even time for rest as Jason Busey (above, right, holding power supply) and Matt a/k/a "Mr. Wireman" (above, right, against panel) demonstrate.

Normally, underneath the layout, Danny Garland came topside to "supervise" and discuss improvements with the rest of the team.

As usual, Charlie DeVilbiss (above left) continued to solder resistor onto LED leads and John Arnold (above right) worked on attaching RJ-12 connectors onto over 50 cables for the signal heads which will finally be installed.

Rob Robins and Jim Willis took the evening off to host a group of six railroaders fro South Louisiana on Rob's Marshall and East Texas. I understand they ran until they dropped.

Finally, David Colvin demonstrates how the T9000E throttles will be worn by crew members utilizing a lanyard from Office Depot and an eye screw.