Some additional progress on Fuhgeddaboudit Yard.  Finished laying tracks in the locomotive servicing area along with weathering and installing the bases of three of the yard's servicing areas - ash pit, coal tipple and diesel servicing.

In a major brain dead senior moment I misplaced and cannot find the base for the two bay car shop.  Sheet styrene will be used to replace it.

Built an ascending / descending ramp for the coal delivery to the tipple using Woodland Scenics preformed 2% incline / decline set and 1/2" riser set along with plaster cloth.  Using the Woodland Scenics products was a lot easier than scratch building plus I have enough left over for two additional incline / decline areas.

Next is the power distribution for the four locomotive servicing tracks.  I will be using the switches in the turnout motors to turn power on only to the track designated by the yard master.

A few snapshots below of the locomotive servicing area.  Any structures you see are from Dick Wegner's finely detailed layout.

Overall view of the yard.  Loco servicing on left and classification yard on right.

Locomotive servicing area

Yup, lousy job in Photoshop covering up the junk behind the layout in the photo above.

Since turnout motors are back ordered I plan to start work adding two 8 feet long x 2 feet wide sections to lengthen the mainline, add sidings for the coal mine and a bridge over what will be a canal.

Reverse loop through Fuhgeddaboudit Yard is in, powered and tested using a PSX-AR autoreverser.  Most likely I will change the two PSX-AR autoreversers for the yard and mainline loops to a two port Frog-AR which cuts the cost per autoreverse loop about in half.

The mainline loop will not have a high current load since the maximum number of locos on the loop at any one time may be three.  The yard loop will have a higher power requirement with up to five or six locos.  Assuming two yard switchers sorting cars plus three or four road engines moving in and out of the servicing area.

I plan to use the switches in the turnout motors to turn power off and on to individual tracks in the loco servicing area.  The two switches in the Circuitron Tortoises have a maximum current rating of one amp and I will use one for powering the turnout frog so I cannot run a parallel electrical path through both switches.  The DCC Concepts Cobalts have two switches and each switch is rated at five amps so I will be able to use one of the switches to turn power on and off to individual tracks and the other switch for the frog.  Problem is that the Cobalts are out of stock due to some parts coming from China.  I will be calling DCC Concepts (UK company) tomorrow to get and update.

DCC Concepts also has some interesting control systems for turnouts that I am looking into.

Well, so much for the boring stuff.  I did get a Big Boy and DD-40 consist going.  Just took a while to speed match them.  Low quality iPhone video below.

Quick video of the progress below.

The track for the first reverse loop through Fuhgeddaboudit Yard is down and I expect to have it powered and tested by midweek.  Fingers crossed.

This loop includes the classification yard ladder and engine servicing area.  These tracks loop from the arrival track through the classification yard and engine servicing area back to the departure track where there is access to the mainline.

Yup, that is a UP Big Boy on the arrival track with a string of NY Central Pacemaker box cars and a NYC caboose behind it.  Hey, it's my railroad.

All that sound is coming from the SD-7 / DD-40 consist.  I will be turning the volume down very low on all sound equipped locos.  An op session may have 2 or 3 yard switchers, several engines on the mainline and a couple on the branch.  I am not supplying ear plugs.

April 16, 2020

Currently laying track for the second reverse loop which is Fuhgeddaboudit Yard.  This yard is configured as a large loop inside the mainline loop.

Road engines will enter the yard via a long arrival siding and cutoff from their trailing cars.  The road engine will proceed around the classification yard to the locomotive servicing area while the yard engine sorts the recently arrived cars.

The classification yard has long leads at each end plus a runaround track at each end to aid the yard crew in sorting.

Departing trains are pushed onto the long departure siding where the road engine can wait and then back up to pick up its train.  From the departure siding the train enters the mainline.

I am working out the power distribution for this yard.

Update on the testing of the auto reverse units.

The MRC AD520 and the DCC Specialties Frog-AR are powered by the track buss in the same power block as the mainline buss that is connected to the reverse loop.  I use a DCC Specialties PSX as the circuit breaker on the mainline.


1.  MRC AD520 - $33.81 at Blue Ridge Hobbies

Very easy to set up.  Two red wires to the mainline and two yellow wires to the reversing section.  No options or adjustments to set.
Wires are approximately 22 AWG and do not have connectors.  The wires need to be stripped and spliced to the mainline and reverse loop busses.

Results of test:  Worked initially but became intermittent.  Several retests with the same results.  I plan to retest again.


2.  DCC Specialties Frog-AR - $49.95 at Tony's Train Exchange

Can be configured to power four turnout frogs, or two turnout frogs and one reverse loop or two reverse loops.  Has adjustable trip current independent of the circuit breaker for the block it is in.

Requires wire jumpers soldered to the pc board to configure for reverse loops.  Also requires wire jumpers soldered to the pc board to change trip current from one amp to up to four amps.
Must be used within the same block powering the mainline and frogs or reverse loops.  Input power is off the mainline buss.

Screw down terminals for input power from mainline block and four screw down terminals for wiring to frogs and / or reverse loops.  One wire for each frog and two wires required for each reverse loop. 

Worked well without stalling or hesitation.  Ran a two diesel consist into and out of reverse loop and also had another diesel enter reverse loop while first consist was in loop without any stalling or hesitation.



3.  DCC Specialties PSX-AR - I had these sitting on the shelf since 2013.
Current cost is $53.95 at Tony's Train Exchange


This is a combination circuit breaker and auto reverser.  Set up is similar to the standard PSX with push pin jumpers to set trip current at one of four settings - 1.27, 3.81, 6.35 or 8.81 amps.  Screw down terminals for input power from booster and for output terminals for reverse loop.

Test results the same as the Frog-AR.

I plan to use this device to power Fuhgeddaboudit Yard (upper level yard) which is a large multitrack reverse loop incorporating a freight classification yard and locomotive servicing area.

This device has many features that I will not use so it is overkill for this application.  In testing I found that 3.81 amp trip current setting will handle five sound equipped locomotives at startup.  Since this is a yard there may be that many powering up although I plan to use the switches within the turnout motors to control on / off power to various tracks limiting the number of locos in the servicing area firing up simultaneously.  The classification yard will always be powered.

As I wrote previously I am naming locations on my model railroad after neighborhoods in Brooklyn, NY.  I grew up in the Gravesend neighborhood which was one of the original 17th century Dutch settlements on the western end of Long Island.

Since we are locked in at home I was cruising the TV with my remote when I came upon a four episode mini-series on Amazon Prime titled "Gravesend".  As it turns out the producer, who is also the lead actor, is from Gravesend and the series was shot mostly in the old neighborhood.  If it gets traction there will more episodes.

The story line centers around a soldier in a ficticious ethnic fraternal organization whose members all have last names that end in a vowel.  The real last names of most of the actors and actresses in the show also end in a vowel.  Hmmmm.

If you decide to watch this show just know that it is not an uplifitng experience and the characters have as many redeeming qualities as the characters that were in the Sopranos.  Basically a bunch of thugs.

Now for the model railroad update:
Ran into shorting and stalling problems testing the MRC AD520 and DCC Specialties Frog-AR auto reversers.  I will be going through all the wiring and step-by-step tomorrow to try to figure this out.  I will have several reverse loops so functioning auto reversers are a must have.

As it turns out I should have read the old hand written notes I made on the Arnold decoder instructions that came with these Rivarossi units.  This decoder is 20 years old and can only use a two digit address for the locomotive.

Except when it cannot.

I use a loco’s road number as the address and the road numbers of these two are 4008 and 4010.  For this decoder I used just the last two digits of each so I set the addresses as 08 and 10.  Well the Arnold decoder likes the 10 but will not accept a leading zero as in 08.  So the address of 4008 is just 8.

Long story short- I will eventually change out the decoders in these two locos.

Made some additional test runs today with the DC locos and found four that would not run.  Opened them up and cranked the flywheel around a few times and they ran.  In general most were fairly noisy and will need cleaning and lubrication prior to being decoder equipped and placed into service.

I forgot how noisy the old Athearn Blue Box Specials were.

A short video of one of the test runs.  Three Bachmann Spectrum DDA-40 Centennials.  Six motors turning 48 wheels.  No problem climbing the 2% grade that will be on the finished layout.
I could not find any prototype photos of Union Pacific consisting multiple Centennials.  The photos I did find had them in a consist with one or more six axle road engines.