Almost a Mud Fest, definitely a RailFest!

(warning - long post ensues)

With all the rain we had in Maitland on Friday night and Saturday it almost was a MudFest. The event got its name this year from the location. Maitland Nova Scotia is located at the mouth of the Shubenacadie River which looks rather muddy when the tide is out.

Setup began Friday afternoon about 3:00. We, the P.E.I. group, didn't arrive until close to 4:30 unfortunately. We got to work right away and had the modules set up within a couple hours. By 9:30 the layout was pretty much up and running.

A "stitched" image of the layout (Ric Hamilton photo)

When we set up at trains shows the layout is much smaller (60' - 80' in length) and takes only a couple hours to set up. But with about 150' of modules it takes a lot more time.

It was the first time we used my PS4 from Tony's Trains Exchange and that took some time to get wired in. I was sure I had all the plugs installed so that the power phase would be right but somehow I messed up two zones and had to swap wires around at the board. At least it was a simple fix.

The crews get their instructions before the operations begin

Trying to sort out the shorting issue on David's modules was another matter. We probably spent at least 30 minutes trying to sort it out. We finally rigged it so that it wasn't shorting but the problem was not really solved. But, we were able to run trains.

The Fullerton kids

Some young railfans stake out Allegheny Paper as a great source of action.

Little did they know they'd get monstrous action!
(Check out the top of the building and the girl's hand)

We left the school about 10:00 and went back to Will's. Dave Thompson, Al Bishop, Ryan Nelson, and myself stayed at Will's. Everyone else came back to drop off cars and arrange car pooling back into Truro where they were staying. Before they left we arrange the schedule for the next day. We were to meet at the school at 8:00.

The next morning I woke up about 6:00 and went into the house for a shower. I figured someone would be waiting to use the shower when I came out, but there was no one. Actually, there was also no sound of life from within the house at all. I went outside to see if Al and Ryan were up. Everything was very quiet. It was raining so I sat in the barn where there was some shelter.

Al and Ryan got up about 7 so I went into the house with them to wait. I was sure someone would wake up with all the activity in the house. But after half an hour we went back outside to wait.

David running a Port Yarmouth Turn. Some of these were too long!

Another Port Yarmouth Turn

At 8:00 I was getting a little impatient so I got Will's phone # from information and dialed it. I guess that created a stir. Dave T. finally got up, followed closely by Will. We were at the school before 8:30 where everyone was waiting and a red faced Will had to take the heat for the late start.

The first thing we did was to get the coffee on (I was really croaking for one after having been awake for two and a half hours with no Tim's within walking distance). We got the rest of the rolling stock on the layout and populated the industries with freight cars to start. We were ready to start operating by 10:30.

Al working the Hazard Bend Wayfreight.

Ryan running the Spring Valley Wayfreight

Shawn had worked out a great spreadsheet to create car movements on a modular layout. But never having seen the layout before he wasn't aware of the length of passing sidings. Some of the trains were a little to long. But the nice thing about the spreadsheet was the flexibility to change things on the fly resulting in slightly shorter trains.

Operations went quite smoothly. We discovered a few turnouts in the yard that created shorts when locos went over them. They'll have to be replaced before the next setup. Greg's new Wye modules set worked quite well, except for a few shorting issues with some locos and the long reach required to throw the far turnouts.

A rare sight indeed - Steve's got an almost empty yard!

Steve's new 90 degree curve set looks great so far. He is using a new construction method found on the internet. It should create a fairly sturdy and lightweight module.

The PS4 worked perfectly except for about 4 times when it wouldn't recover from a short. It would recover after I disconnected one of the leads for the zone. I figure it's related to having several sound equipped locos in the zone at once. It was odd though because most times the PS4 would recover on it's own. I will include a switch for each zone on the board to handle this situation a little easier.

One really stubborn situation we had over the weekend was some decoders that would get reprogrammed once in a while (usually after a short occured, but not after every short). What made it more interesting was that even though all three engines had different types, and brands of decoders they all got set the same way - Deceleration = 96, Vstart, Vmid, and Vmax = 0. Fortunately we had programmer set up connected to a laptop running DecoderPro so the fix was fairly painless. It was still a nuisance having to deal with it every 30 - 45 minutes. I'll have to ask some of the experts on the DCC groups.

The Saturday evening slow-down. Our legs were pretty tired after standing for 10 hours!

Supper on Saturday was a barbecue in the rain at Will's. We put Will outside with the barbecue while we set up a table and chairs in the barn. I think everyone was full by the end of it.

We went back to the school after supper to run a few more trains and called it quits about 10:00. Some of the folks staying in Truro enjoyed a video of trains running on P.E.I. that Shawn did many years ago. Then went chasing a real train in the Wentworth Valley. They had a slightly later night than we did in Maitland.

Hmm... a new fad in the memorial business?

Ray spends time railfanning.

Sunday started out like Saturday should have, although I still beat Will to the shower at 6:20. We had a great breakfast prepared by Sue Ellen, Will, and myself (I felt guilty sitting there not helping!) and got to the school about 8:00. We ran a few "formal" trains while we waited for the "public" part of the weekend started. Except for a few teachers that had some summer work to do, and Will's family we didn't have very many visitors.

Shawn enjoys running the yard.

Steve's back in Hazard Bend

We started packing up about 1:00 pm and were saying our good-byes by 3:30. Everyone heading west met at a restaurant near Truro for a group meal to end off the weekend. We arrived back on P.E.I. about 7:30. By the time we done distributing and unpacking the gear it was about 9:00. My own bed sure felt good last night!

Dave has Port Yarmouth figured out finally!

Al switching the Spring Valley Turn

All in all it was a great weekend, as usual. It's great that everyone in the UMG group gets along so well. I think it's the informal nature of the group that makes it less stressful and a whole lot more fun. I'm looking forward to the Truro show this October. With all the new members and modules we are accumulating we should be able to set up unique layout with new modules no-one has seen before.

A common site during MudFest.

Coffee and spare locos were the order of the day.

Later!

Scott

Summertime Operating

I guess it's time to get back into the swing of things. Summer is not over, but I really need to get back into this on-line stuff. It's been stagnant way too long!

I haven't done anything new to the layout all summer. At least until this past weekend. I've had a PSFour from Tony's for almost a year. I finally got around to installing it yesterday (sorry no pics of it yet). So far I only have two zones set up, Tidewater Yard, and the rest of the layout. Eventually there will be four zones: Bayside, Stevenville/Derwin's Drop, Kenville/Chappellton, and Tidewater. The guys noticed a big difference last evening even with only two zones. The biggest difference was not having to press the reset button after a short.

The reason I finally installed the PSFour? UMG's annual RailFest weekend is this weekend coming and we needed a circuit breaker. So I had to install in on my layout to make sure I knew it worked. And it did, flawlessly, right out of the box.

This year's RailFest is called "MudFest, since it is being held in the mud capital of eastern Canada - Maitland N.S. We've rented a school gymnasium to set up our Free-Mo Style modules and operate the layout all weekend. It should be a blast!

You can see what the layout should look like, provided all the modules show up. There will probably be a module or two constructed at the last minute due to no-shows.

Anyway, back to last evening's operating session. Summer operations are usually quite a bit different from winter operations in that fewer people attend. There's usually two or three that have other things come up and one that takes the summer off completely. So, I have created scenarios for operations on the BS&T based on the number of operators on hand. For example if there are only two operators everything is switched by Wayfreights - TuB Rambler (East Bound) and Backwater Crawler (West Bound) and I run the staging train (Wholeinthal Turn) and the Transfer Turn. If there are three operators the third guy runs the two turns and I spend more time helping in yards or with helper service on Devil's Ridge.

Derwin ran the Wholeinthal Turn last night. Here he is running past Chappellton shortly after departing Wholeinthal. Eventually you won't be able to see the train running through this area because of buildings and other view breaks in front of the tracks.

Once he arrives in Tidewater he'll hop in the company van and head to Bayside where he'll make up the Transfer and run it into Tidewater. Back in Tidewater he'll have to make up both return trains and run them out to their destinations. He'll be a busy guy!

(Actually I helped him out a bit and did some sorting and made up part of his trains for him while he was out on the road)

Shawn is one of our summertime regulars. He's operated with us the past few summers while he is on break from teaching in some exotic places around the world (like Taiwan, the Philippines, and Togo). Here he is getting the TuB Rambler ready for the trip to Bayside. It's a fairly small train (5 cars) leaving Tidewater, but by the time it gets to Devil's Ridge it'll require a helper engine to make the grade up to Derwin's Drop. He's got a lot of work ahead of him since he has to pull all the east bound cars in the four towns along the way and put away cars that he has in his train for those towns as well.

Well, the way the evening progressed the Tub Rambler didn't make it past Stevenville. Here it is parked on the Stevenville work siding. It'll give me something to do while I wait for the next BS&T operating session in 3 weeks



Unfortunately, I got too busy myself to take many pictures so I don't have any shots of Greg running the Backwater Crawler. He did make it all the way from Bayside to Tidewater though.

All in all I think it was a great evening for us. I certainly had fun!

Anyway, I'll post a little something next week about our "MudFest" in Maitland N.S. this weekend. I'll try to take lots of pictures!

Scott