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 Posted - April 27 2024 : 01:49:50 AM
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https://youtu.be/qn62dwgNLbs
Greetings friends. Been on the lam, as of late. Working full time, going to graduate school
(where you gradually find out you don't want to be there), restoring a 1960 Valiant, and
keeping up with the Railway and Historical Society.
Lately, part of this subway was a gift from WKS, which sent me down that particular
rabbit hole. It had a LOT of run time this month, first at a talk I gave regarding the
history of the NYC subway system and then all day at the Railroad Show at the Freeport-
McMoran Show.
It was a lot of fun, I got to run trains with 11 year olds to 71 year olds. The train layout,
BTW is not my construction. It was built by a very excellent modellor in the 1970's, was
rescued by Prince McKenzie of the El Paso Transportation Museum, and got a little
electrical tweaking from myself to get it running. That layout is about a half century old.
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 Posted - April 27 2024 : 08:45:51 AM
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Nice video Jeff. Deserves a repeat.
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Posted - April 30 2024 : 9:04:52 PM
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Cool little set-up for the subway! What do you have operating the auto-reversing feature?
The layout is also very nicely done. I see someone is running Tyco on it......... 
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Posted - May 01 2024 : 12:16:28 AM
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| Chops, that is a very clever subway layout. Regarding "part of this subway was a gift from WKS," it would be nice to learn more about how this subway was created and who did what. Should be an interesting story! I like the subway tile walls and edging to top it off at the top. Simple but effective.
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Posted - May 03 2024 : 07:10:39 AM
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The autoreverse controller is the Bachmann product. Initially, I tried this complicated thing that had
infrared sensors and all manner of computer chips and yards and yards of wiring. It never worked
quite right, and after some correspondence from the manufacturer, in the UK, he determined that he
had omitted a particular chip. That did it for me and I binned all of it as to go back and rewire the entire
circuit board just didn't make a lot of sense, having already done that a time or two. The Bachmann
product, which I should have gone with from the get-go is a plug-and-play circuit and works the first time,
every time without the nightmare of installing infrared.
The project began when our friend WKS sent me a dummy subway coach by MTH. I'd always pictured doing
a subway layout using a length of PVC tubing, so it was game on. I acquired a powered unit and the
Bachmann track slid right into place and fired up.
The subway "tiles" was simply printed off on a color copier of some suitable looking brick templates, scaled
down slightly. The center aisle between the tracks is simply thin Balsa boards cut to size, painted. Random
bits of electrical looking things were simply glued in to provide a semblance of a grubby subway tunnel and
bits of trash using tinfoil and other tiny bits of scrap for tunnel litter.
The subway entrance is a Walther's kit. It was not feasible to include the stairs, so simply left those to one's imagination. I think in the future I will add a bit more of a street scene to the top of the tube.
Some have noted that generally the NYC subway was characterized by rectangular, not tubular tunnels,
owing to its cut-and-fill construction. Not to argue with the experts, but I do believe that some of the
deeper tunnels, particularly those that go under the higher tunnels, and those tunnels that went through
bedrock, were tubular in construction. And, on the other hand, it was desired to give it a peculiar effect,
that being tubular, to underscore its subterranean nature.
I was willing to have the trackway grubby and the interior a little dingey, but I was not up to graffiti decals on the coaches, which, in hindsight, might make it a little more interesting. There are some who actually find an artistic pretense in urban graffiti, but to me, it looks like urban rot, though the way things are appearing in the news these days, I may go that direction. It would be possible to graffiti up one side of the coaches and leave the other side unscathed, so depending on my mood, I could run them clean or dirty.
The layout is based on memories of a subway adventure I took with my late father back in the 1970s.
For a guy of 10, it was a great adventure.
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Posted - May 03 2024 : 10:20:40 AM
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Years ago I bought an auto-reversing circuit to operate a point-to-point on a Christmas layout. Like yours, it came with infrared sensors, and wiring, and a little circuit board with adjustable knobs to set the sensitivity of the sensors.... While I did eventually get it "working", it was quite harsh on the trains, slamming them from one direction to the other. Maybe something flywheel-equipped would have done better. 
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Posted - May 04 2024 : 02:10:49 AM
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This Bachmann thing cuts the power a few inches before it reverses. The train comes to
a dead stop before reversing. Also, this nice MTH build has a flywheel, so motion is quite
smooth.
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