I ran a train!

After a good walk along the lake this evening and having made beautiful cups of coffee to share (beans from Berwick’s North Mountain nonetheless – my favourite roaster in Nova Scotia) I figured it was time to tinker with the layout. The turnouts were ready in place so I cut some lengths of rod and tube and fitted simple linkages. That took about five minutes. It would be tempting to say something like “I wish I’d just done this a month ago” because of what looks like unproductive time in the middle could have been avoided and I might feel further ahead. I doubt I’d appreciate the value of the time like I do now. Vacillating between different mechanisms to ‘throw’ the turnouts has been frustrating because I have nothing to show for it but I’ve also had a chance to explore each option and gained an enriched understanding of their values. More, I learned a lot about what I’m looking for in a solution. Like anything in life you’ll never recognize a solution you haven’t described the shape of.

I never intended to go this far but the nervous energy in my hands was far from expressed after only a few minutes of fitting those simple turnout linkages so I started tying in some feeder wires. I don’t like to solder rail joints and prefer to attach a pair of feeder wires to every length of rail. I’ve done a nice job of adding these but they’re surface mounted and I wish I’d added them earlier, soldering them to the base of the rails instead of this way. That said, pausing to address this would’ve interrupted the work on the track that I. Would I have missed out on this?

This week another spontaneous engine purchase happened. These Walthers H10-44’s with their Roco drives are about the smoothest running models ever in this hobby. A chance to buy one for an incredibly low price made the decision easy and I’m glad I did. Looking at it on the layout now this model feels like a direct connection to my original N scale layouts. In that era, the only good small diesels were Minitrix’s H12-44’s and we all owned them. I had three. It feels comforting to see a familiar profile on the layout and I can’t help but wonder if this is the shape of my locomotive fleet?

I have jumper wires on all the tracks and throw rods on both turnouts. I dug out my trusty handheld analog controller and a bunch of jumper wires and started alligator clipping everything together. It works! Not only does that sure-footed model creep along the track effortlessly but it hunts, bobs, and weaves as it explores the wobbly nature of my track – exactly as I dreamed it would. This is the first time I’ve run anything more than a freight car truck through the turnouts and I’m glad I spent the time I did refining their design.

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I don’t have any freight cars and resolving that would certainly be fun. I can’t wait to see how they’ll look as they hunt through the weeds to find, then follow, the rails.

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To be honest I have run trains on the Coy siding already but never past its turnout so tonight’s event was the first time on every bit of track, continuously. I feel like Marconi sending a signal across the ocean.

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Categories: Coy Paper (HO) model railway