Espee Oregon Division Project Pages

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Summertime Blues

Our air conditioning died last week and had to go without it for about three days until we finally figured out it was just the capacitor for the condenser fan had failed, but that was when it reached over 105 degrees outside for the whole week.   :(
The layout is used to having climate control along with the rest of the house, so it got well into the 90's in the garage during the afternoons.  This morning I noticed that the layout did not like seeing those temperatures, as a string of boxcars in the new staging yard were leaning significantly to one side from some severe expansion issues.  I have to do a thorough check on how the whole layout fared, but so far only appears to be that one Atlas flex track section where a rail popped out of the ties.  I was worried about the slip rail in all the sections of my Atlas code 55 flex while installing it, as that rail was excessively loose compared to any other flex I had dealt with before.  Fortunately I was able to carefully push the rail back down into the spike heads, so maybe that is better than the whole track section getting distorted and ripped apart....  a little track cleaning with a few test trains should verify if all else is well.

Meanwhile been working way too much overtime at work to get much progress on the layout as I had hoped, but on the brighter side still been able to tinker with a few more sound decoder installs.  The sound fleet now is up to six units, with 2 Cadillacs (SD9's), 3 Tunnel Motors, and an SD40-2 ready for programming.  The PR3 is here, but have yet to actually load any sound projects.  Here's a couple pics of the latest install into a UP Kato SD40-2 that will be used as a pool unit:



Sounds a lot better than the other GP38 default sounds currently in my Cadillacs and Tunnel Motors, that's for sure!  A lot of my power is EMD 645 prime mover equipped, so this unit is a lot of fun to have working since the first actually sporting the correct sounds on the layout!

Getting ready for the PSR layout tour here in September, but not sure if I am going to make it putting the sound units into service with the constraints...  maybe they will give me a break at work     :)