Well, in the end, Louis-Marie was able to troubleshoot our DCC issues. It was mainly a desoldered ground wire into the DCC module. So can now program again our locomotives and adjust their CV according to our needs. It was getting really annoying. Louis alwo took some time to solder a few more feeder on some difficult trackage and turnouts. Seems everything is now much more reliable.
If you wonder why progress as been slow recently, there's many reasons for all club members. Many of them are out of our control, so we do what we can with the little time we have. I hope things will get back on track, but I take that "vacation" to complete long due home improvement work. Over the last weeks, most of my time was going in preparing a 4 hours conference.
That said, I'm still working on my set of woodchip boxcar and I'm happy to announce I started doing some weathering on them. George Dutka's pictures are a great help for getting the right weathering pattern on these heavily abused cars. I'll also try to make some removable woodchip load for them using sawdust and foam blocks.
When these cars are done, my next project will be to pimp this RS18. It will probably be among the regular motive power on the layout for a while. We are actually thinking about adding capacitors to the electronic circuitry to make sure this locomotive (and other others too) will be able to handle small electric gap without problem. When this is done, I'll be free to weather the locomotive as I wish. I'll also make resin copies of some parts (intercooler fans) for my other RS18 projects.
About the layout, scenery is slowly progressing in Maizerets. We need to complete the backdrop then paste the photobackdrop before doing any scenery work. I wish to ballast the track as soon as possible.
That loco is my favourite on my layout... and I have one of the prototype's number boards from when it was scrapped. Love your work!
ReplyDeleteThanks Steve! Good to hear some momorabilia was salvaged just in time.
DeleteI can't wait to this loco running on the layout. Most pictures I found of Limoilou yard in the 80s always have one or two in the background. Can't go wrong with small 4-axle road switchers.