WOW! It's really been 6 years?????

Lets see if I can learn how to work Blogger again. HA!

So yeah, life has kept me away from the layout for basically 6 years and the layout room became a storage room filled with junk from the whole family. It was like trying to walk through a landmine laden maze to get through the room. 

Last week, I decided to tackle the mess and get the room back to the way its supposed to be. It took several days and many loads to the trash but the room is back spic and span. Time to run some trains again!!

Six years sitting wasn't good for the layout. Since I wasn't running the HVAC system, changes in temp and humidity caused some track to buckle. The damage has been assessed and repair crews are on the way. In the mean time, it was time to get some track cleaned so a train would run. It's amazing how much grit gets on the rails just from sitting. I couldn't get a loco to run 5 feet without stalling. A good cleaning got trains running on the main like a dream! Here's a nice consist of Intermountain Railways GP10s pulling the track cleaning car.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speaking of the Intermountian GP10, as you can see in an earlier post, these were announced in 2013. They actually released in 2017 with my pre-orders showing up in March of 2017. Sadly, they went into a box and got shoved under the layout. They didn't come out of their box to go on the layout until this day! 

After some hand scrubbing of the rails, the GP10s pulled a cleaning car with Whals oil to further clean the rails. Here's a video of the consist crossing Tibbee Creek.

 

After cleaning, it was time to run a train! Using this same consist, I switched out and built a 50 car train. It made several laps around the layout with no problems. I got a nice video of it but this blogger said the file size was too big. I'll have to figure out how to reduce the file size.

I had an issue with my DCC system and a stuck function. After some help from the company's Tech support, I got the system reset. This led to some programming issues as the system, after reset, wouldn't recognize locomotives that had been programmed into a consist. So, I spent a few days individually reprogramming each locomotive. This led to finding several DCC locomotives that my system won't recognize. These were some of my favorite locos and were some of the last run before my break. I'm still trying to figure out the issue. 

Anyway, that's an update. I do plan on there being more as I get life back into the layout.