"Meet the Modeler"

Our friends and creators over at Trains.com and Kalmbach Media have put together the next in their series of 'Meet the Modeler' articles online, and this month it's a fun question & answer about my modeling journey and the Onondaga Cutoff!

https://www.trains.com/mrr/news-reviews/news/meet-dave-abeles/

I will let the article do the speaking, but it's got a few tidbits that nearly everyone will learn for the first time.  Enjoy!

First Fully Remote Operations - a Success!

Saturday May 9 was one for the history books on the Onondaga Cutoff - we had our first fully remote operation session, broadcast on Facebook Live!  

We operated 3 hours of the regular schedule with a few adjustments to fit in the allotted time, with a remote dispatcher, 4 remote operators, and a backup remote operator.  The session went amazingly well for the first such session with me in the basement and everyone else at home!  

Operators used WiThrottle, logged into the JMRI server on the railroad through the internet.  Simultaneously, they used VPN software to view the dispatcher's panel, and ran a Skype group call hooked to an FRS radio set to voice activation in the basement that was my radio repeater.  

They also ran a Zoom conference video chat so they could see Onondaga Yard, which we used afterwards for a virtual cheers that was graciously photographed by Rich W.

Seriously awesome for this to have gone well.  My thanks go this this crew, of course - Rich, Andrew, Jack, Al, Ralph and John - as well as to Nick who built the system, and Alex who figured out the networking part of it.  Without that crew, this doesn't happen. 

The video was recorded and is available for viewing here:

https://www.facebook.com/onondagacutoff/videos/2976100145777294/

Thanks for the support!  I am hoping to write an article about this for publication in print, and will keep you posted on that.  Necessity is the genesis of invention sometimes, and this is a case in point.

~RGDave

CP 282 - Track is In!

Over the course of a week or two of evenings, I have been able to align all the switches for CP 282, the west end of Onondaga Yard and the junction with the Minoa & Euclid Railroad, which will eventually be built to interchange with Conrail's Onondaga Cutoff.

Pictured below is the west end of the interlocking, the point at which the mainline will curve to the right, pass beneath a highway bridge, and begin the 2% drop down to staging.

Interlockings take a long while to install, because it needs to be right the first time, and it involves everything at once: both tracks, sidings, switch machines, and eventually, signals. Everything, including predrilled holes for switch machines, has to be located exactly before any piece of track can be permanently fixed in place. I like this view of the new infrastructure:
A recent article in Model Railroader was written by a modeler who never used commercial flex track or switches, preferring to have the realism offered by hand-laying. Recently he needed to finish a new addition to his layout quickly and had to use commercial products, and wrote an article on how he made them work with his design. One idea of his that I used over the weekend was to modify commercial switches to flow better with my design at the east end of CP 282 - this is a Shinohara (Walthers) #8 frog, left-hand switch. I cut the long ties on the far side of the frog with a razor saw, used a utility knife to remove the tie spacers beneath the rails, and then gently and patiently curved the main route and diverging route to match the adjacent curves. I am very happy with the results - subtle, but crucial to the future alignment.
On the far side of CP 282, along what will be Onondaga Yard, the mainline makes a sweeping curve. I use masking tape, layered and staggered by several inches on each end to 'step up' to the full superelevation gradually at both ends of the curve. Pictured here, Track 1 has the tape installed, while Track 2 to the left is waiting for tape.
So, the interlocking at CP 282 is now in place, though not yet operational. Here is the overview for an eastbound train. The North Runner for Onondaga Yard comes off on the left in this view, and the connector to the M&E is on the right in the middle distance:

And, finally, the view a westbound will have of the whole plant at CP 282, with the South Runner for the yard coming in at the bottom right. This view allows one to readily see the route that M&E trains will take to interchange.
As always, more to come - each rainy weekend allows some time to make some progress!