SteamPower4ever

Aaaaand ... the Santa Fe F7s are now pushed to February '16.

Just testing ... I simply cut-and-pasted the address from the YouTube page, but make sure to use the www.youtube.com address and not the youtu.be abbreviated one. By the way, the video shows the Swiss Crocodile Ce6/8 14305 passing the Great Belt tunnel on its way to the celebrations of 100 years of electrification of the Swedish railways. Jens

Southern Pacific F7 AA set now bumped to January '16. Told you so.

Hi all. Bahnwelt TV has a video from the annual gauge 1 fair at the Sinsheim technical museum. Narration is in German, but the video quality is great. Lots of great models on display as usual, and this year the show has something for the US audience too. At 12:30 there's UP 844 from Aster. At 19:30 there's a US-themed layout on display. Jens

Interestingly, MTH has now published the second road number of the AA set, and they'll have numbers 311L and 310C. This puts the set in the Amtrak era, since - according to the ATSF Historical Society - the 300 series F7s were delivered as LAB consists. The 3XXC units didn't appear until Amtrak renumbered A units from the 16 and 37 classes after 1971, thus forming LABC consists in the 300 range. I think I'll renumber my units to the two-digit range. I want an ATSF consist, not Amtrak. Jens

I hope you're right, Ray.

Norfolk Southern and Ontario Northland F7s just got pushed from August to November. Wow - I was so sure they'd say October. Any takers on a bet that the entire lot is pushed into 2016? After all, they're now in the 2015 catalog, so slipping a few months doesn't look so terrible ... Hmm, where do those bite marks in my desk come from ??? Jens

Lovely pics Thanks. Jens

Last weekend the Danish Railway Club took their K class no. 564 to the outermost leg of the Northwest main line where the traffic is not so heavy and there's room for a steam train. It's nice to see the 4-4-0 on the main where it can stretch its legs for once, so I had a day out with the camera, following the train. The roads are not suited for pacing and the trips are short, so I took up position in each of the two round-trip passes and got some footage at the station as well. Blew one pass completely due to lack of focus, but I had enough to edit a nice video. Here it is. Enjoy. Jens

Joe, you can upload pictures to postimg.org. When you do, you get a link that you can use to insert images here. I do that a lot. Of course, being a free service, I am the product, so I haven't read the fine print, and I don't know their business model. I only upload pics that I don't care about being used for whatever it is they use them for. Jens

Cool I read up on that not so long ago. I didn't know it was just an ordinary Budd railcar that was jet-ified. Very cool experiment. Is that a pitot tube below the headlight ??? Jens

It depends mostly on the construction of the power supplies. If the Norwegian mains principle is anything like the Danish (and it looks like it is), you have a ground/earth wire (the yellow/green) in the mains cable. This means that you must ensure that the DC outputs are floating and isolated from the mains or you risk ground loops which can carry substantial currents. With the supplies disconnected from mains, measure the resistance from each DC output terminal to each of mains input terminals. There must be no short circuit anywhere. Assuming the outputs are floating, you can safely tie one track together on all four supplies. When a train passes the boundary between power domains, you will have a short on the second track, and now the construction of the power supply will be the deciding factor for what happens. Imagine a two-truck diesel with power pickup on both trucks / all wheels. What happens when: One truck is spanning two power domains ... The engine has one truck in each domain ... In particular, consider the above if the voltages in the two domains are not exactly matched. Your engine will act as a short, and you can have up to 15A passing through the internal wiring. I have two regulated 24V DC supplies that may be coupled in parallel just like that. When they power up, they argue about the world for a bit, and then they agree on the output voltage and settle down, providing twice the current. They are designed for it. I have other regulated supplies where this is not possible. They are designed to assume they are alone in the world. So basically the answer to your question is that it's a matter of design. I would at least make sure that my rolling stock could cope with whatever happens when passing domain borders. Ohm's law applies here. I'm not sure what I would do. Other people here may be more experienced with practical MR use - I'm just an electrics/electronics guy. Jens

Various videos are showing up on YouTube: The large transports leaving Korsør harbour: One of the flatbeds passing a roundabout in Korsør: Two transports on the motorway outside the town of Slagelse (close to my home) They're climbing Vaarby Hill, which is not very long, but fairly steep. It looks like they're letting regular traffic through on the hard shoulder lane. Time-lapse video from Banedanmark, showing the construction of the spans over the southbound motorway. And finally an animated CG presentation of the construction principle. If you search for "København-Ringsted" on YouTube there are more videos visualizing the high-speed railway project. Jens

A few more pictures from this weekend. Friday in Korsør. Girders are waiting at the dock and the flatbeds are loaded and ready to move when the night comes. This is one of the small flatbeds ... Sunday - on my way to visit family I passed the construction site and managed to get a few shots. A view to the span over the southbound lanes, currently being constructed. If you want to read more about the new high-speed line, here is a link to Banedanmark, the Danish rail authority. Jens

It certainly is a veranda turbine - 2nd. generation turbine. The Big Blows were the third generation and they were bigger and more powerful than the verandas, but I let it pass because of Chucks cool subject line Here's the real big blow: Union Pacific Gas Turbine Electric Locomotive by Jeff Mezera, on Flickr

Allright - I tracked it down. The operator is called DBB Salvage.

Yep - it's called Samson. Edit: Hmm, that page doesn't state the owner or operator, but its home port is Aarhus here in Denmark.

Very cool picture

Denmark's first high-speed rail line (250 km/h) is currently under construction and on its way out of Copenhagen it crosses practically every freeway possible. Naturally lots of bridges and tunnels are needed, and the girders for one of the longest bridges are being built in Poland. A few weeks ago the first shipment arrived by barge and were transported on huge flatbeds across the isle of Sealand (Sjælland). The transports were so large they blocked both lanes on the motorway and had to stop at underpasses to let other traffic pass using the off/on ramps. The next shipment has now arrived at my local harbour, this time on the deck of the good ship M/V Marit of Holland. Once again the largest floating crane in Northern Europe was called upon to lift the girders ashore, and as I passed on the way home from work today, they were offloading the last of the girders. Naturally I had to stop and take a few pictures ... Jens

Those were the days where you could find derelict steamers scattered all over. Ahh, the memories ...

Yes, interesting subject. I like having a number of projects pending or in progress, because if I stall, I can turn my attention to something else while waiting for inspiration. That's just how my mind works. Not too many open ends, though, because then I get paralyzed and frustrated without really knowing why. Thus I tend to force myself to finish what I'm doing or sidetrack it to get it out of the loop. Currently I have these projects going, planned or being dreamed about: Ongoing: 1:32 scale: Scratch building a Danish CU type guard's van 1:32 scale: Converting 20 pcs. 1:32 scale two-axle freight cars to Danish types. 10 pcs. finished. Stalled until further notice. N scale: Building a layout at home. Backdrops are next. N scale: Converting a Kato FEF-3 to DCC Planned: 1:32 scale: Convert a BR50 steamer to Danish class N. Waiting for the MTH F7s to arrive as the BR50 is my only gauge 1 motive power N scale: Convert remaining motive power to DCC: 2xF3, GP7, H16-44 1:32 scale: Convert MTH F7s to full-blown DCC and powering the B units. Probably not until after the BR50 conversion. Finish stage 3 (final stage) of the home layout Landscape on the home layout Rewrite my software to version 2. Procrastinating Dreams: 1:32 scale: Building a Hegob kit for a Breuer 1930's tractor 1:32 scale ATSF hi-levels 1:32 scale F7 in TEE livery Four ongoing projects is nice. The number of planned projects is a bit high, so now and again I realize I need to move some of those into the 'dreams' bin. I just let a pair of really cheap N scale GP7s go on ebay because as you can see, I have plenty of motive power waiting for me, and maybe the money was better spent on decoders or track for the next stage of the layout. It's all about being honest to myself, really. Jens

I subscribe to this guy on YouTube. His drone shots are really something ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub5H0BFQk88 Jens

Unfortunately not. It's a storage facility for people's boats, cars, restoration projects and whatnot. You should see one of the other warehouses at the facility. Loaded with expensive cars you rarely see on the road, and most are for sale. There's even a DeLorean in reasonable condition ... Jens

On July 4th we held the annual summer party at my 1:32 club. Because the club currently has the layout installed, this time an informal operating session (yeah, like we have formal ones) preceded the party before retiring to the home and garden of one of the club members for beverages and barbeque. I was under the layout for some time, cleaning up the wiring on the double crossover and installing a Dual Frog Juicer, so I didn't shoot that much video. Also, traffic was sparse, as it was one of the last days of the heatwave, and most activity was talking, light modeling, bouncing ideas and having a good time. The double crossover now works better than ever, though. Here's the best of my shots and below is a longer video from one of the other club members. New stuff was being displayed and exercised on the track that day. Jens

Uuh ... duuh ... 20 amps ... Yikes! What kind of bearings do these cars have? Rollers?