Trainfacts

We also visited Dr. Jack Fisher in Nashville – after we made a stop at the Nashville train store. Dr. Jack has a large layout in the basement that runs through a couple of rooms, breaking the layout into isolated scenes.

Dr. Jack also has a modest garden railroad, but the falling leaves were covering much of the layout.

It was time for me to thank Larry and his wife Sue Ann and move on. I left Clarksville, headed for Memphis and a visit to Graceland. I didn’t have a lot of time to spend at Graceland, but I was too close to pass up the opportunity.

After leaving Graceland, I headed for Mountain Home AR to visit Alan and LaKeeta Arnold. That was a hard piece of two-lane highway driving since I was in a hurry to get there at a reasonable hour. I was in for several surprises when I arrived.

Alan’s house is a converted A-frame church. They added a loft for a bedroom, but they still had a large open area at one end of the A-frame. Alan added on a large extension that houses a media room, his train layout and a garage. When Alan took me into the layout room, I suddenly realized that Alan was the skyscraper guy!! He has some beautiful high-rise buildings on his layout. His room has an extra-high ceiling to make tall buildings possible. (Alan has an architecture background.)

And that was just the start. We went next door to Alan’s neighbor who runs an 0 scale 2-rail layout. The layout is around the wall with a peninsula.

We had dinner at a local steak eatery, where we were joined by Charlene & Craig Chesbro. I wouldn’t get to see their train layouts until the following day.

When we got back to Alan’s house, I found that my bedroom in the loft also had a train layout. This was a compact military layout featuring all kinds of Lionel rocket launchers and other weapons.

The next morning we drove over to the Chesbro’s house. Charlene has an On3 layout that she is building in the garage.

During the summer months they also run a garden railroad that has extensive landscaping. Most of the buildings were already stowed away for the winter, but there were still a few things to see.

That was the end of the train layouts. I high-tailed it from Arkansas to Amarillo for a night’s sleep, then on to Albuquerque for lunch at my favorite Mexican restaurant, then overnight at Flagstaff.

I visited the Lowell Observatory in the morning. This had special significance for me. The planet Pluto was discovered at the Lowell Observatory by Clyde Tombaugh. When I was in Cub Scouts in Las Cruces, one night we went over to a guys back yard to look through his telescope at the planets. It was a fairly big telescope. Turns out the “guy” was Clyde Tombaugh! We didn’t realize the significance at the time, but now that I think back on that rare opportunity I cherish the moment. The Lowell Observatory visit was like a pilgrimage to honor Clyde. After the Observatory I hopped into my trusty Malibu and headed for a dinner date with a lady friend of Larry Levin in Phoenix. We had a pleasant evening, and then I decided to drive the 400 miles to home that night. I got in very late, but I was glad to be home.

The photos here are just a mere sampling of the hundreds of photos from the trip. I wish I could include more, but space just doesn’t allow.

I want to express my heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed to this wonderful trip. The hospitality was outstanding and the sharing of trains was unconditional. I made a lot of new friends. I am blessed to be able to embark on such an adventure. Thank you, one and all. I do intend to go back to see Dr. Jack’s new passenger terminal peninsula and Johnny Dawson’s scenery. Also, Larry promises me that we will go to Cincinnati and other exciting places…..

Your OGR Forum Roving Ambassador

Dale Manquen

The following chronology of my trip is quite long because it spans 17 days and 5000 miles.

The goals of the trip were to help Lyle Dumont with his TMCC problems in Iowa and to visit several OGR Forum members along the way. A detailed review of the Dumont visit is in the R&D Projects file on my www.trainfacts.com site http://www.trainfacts.com/trainfacts/?p=486 .

The trip began on Saturday, October 6 with my trusty Chevy Malibu headed east to Denver via Las Vegas and Grand Junction. The first day was just driving (835 miles), arriving at Grand Junction in the evening for a night in a motel.

Next morning I headed through Glenwood Canyon, stopping to take a few pictures along the river. My goal was to get to Denver early enough to meet Chuck Sartor in the afternoon. When I arrived on the west side of Denver, I called Chuck and he offered to meet me at a nearby restaurant for coffee (actually, beer.) We rendezvoused and chatted for a while, sharing our train repair experiences.

I then headed for downtown Denver to hook up with the local train club (Rocky Mountain Division of the TCA) meeting on Sunday evening. When I arrived, I was greeted by Jerry Foss. The first order of business was for me to give Jerry a TPC that I had repaired for him, then on to the club meeting. I won a bulkhead car as a door prize, and I purchased a 2343 unpowered A that is in poor condition and missing the power pickup.  Susan Deats invited me to visit her layout on Monday. 

After the meeting I joined the group for more visiting at the local coffee shop. Jerry invited me over to his house to see his layout afterwards. Jerry’s layout is a work in progress, but he has an excellent setup for working on his trains and layout.

After visiting Jerry’s layout I headed south to Parker to my sister’s house. It was late when I got there, but it had been a very nice day.

On Monday my sister and I visited Susan’s layout.  What fun!  Thanks, Susan.  My (non-train) sister really enjoyed meeting you.  My sister and I both loved the Mel’s Diner on her layout, and we recalled out teenage memories at the local drive-in restaurant in Las Cruces, NM where we grew up.

Susan’s layout is a long, narrow layout with multiple levels along the walls. She has a huge helix of track so that she can run any train everywhere on the layout. She explained that this was HER layout, and her husband and his machine shop are her backup when she needs help.

We then went to Caboose Hobbies, to meet Xavier, the repair tech who sends me TMCC controllers for repair. I had been to Caboose Hobbies several times in the past, but just as an interested visitor. Xavier and I had talked several times, but it was nice to add a face to the voice. Xavier gave me some dead electronics cards and I bought (for a very nominal sum) a Kline trolley in need of repair.

After spending some time with my sister and her family, I departed the Denver area through Nebraska to Sigourney in the south central part of Iowa – about 800 miles. Sig’ ourney (not Sigour’ney like the actress) is a small town with two motels because it is near a popular recreation area, Lake Belva Deer .

After breakfast I headed out to Lyle Dumont’s place on the highway just south of town. The Dumont Museum is a multifaceted collection of tractors, O gauge trains, Roy Rogers memorabilia and more. First we had a quick tour of the four major areas of the museum. The entry lobby has a train layout that is about 25’ x 30’.

The next room is a 60’ x 100’ steel building that is all one big train layout except to a row of old buggies and a hearse wagon along one side wall. The third room is the tractor collection.

Lyle collects and displays (all in running condition) a vast collection of green Oliver tractors. They are all fully restored and look beautiful. He has very big tractors, medium size tractors, lawn tractors, kiddie tractors and toy tractors arrayed in a 60’ x 260’ building that is stuffed to the rafters. And you thought trains take up space??…. (The Dumonts also sell decals for folks restoring tractors.)

The fourth room is a variety of memorabilia. Lyle was a friend of Roy Rogers, and Lyle had a lot of Roy Rogers goodies. For example, he had pristine comic books, not only for Roy Rogers, but also Dale Evans, Trigger and even their dog Bullet! Lyle has sold some of the Roy Rogers items in the years since Dale passed away, but he still has a bunch left.

I will skip the technical discussion of our work on his layout here since it is covered at .

During my visit I told Lyle about my visit with my sister to Susan Deat’s layout. When I was leaving, Lyle pulled out a box containing a Mel’s Diner and gave it to me as a token of gratitude for my visit. I was thrilled! I love my Diner, and every visitor to my layout finds it to be the highlight of their visit. Thanks again Lyle!

Back on the road again, I headed for St. Louis, driving into rainy weather. I had been invited to visit the St. Louis Lionel Train Club, with Albert Werder as my host. (Albert passed away Jan. 3.) The Train Club has several rooms with different types of layouts in the various rooms. The facilities are excellent and the layouts are all very interesting. I was honored with a gift of a flat car with a Navy semi trailer – a fond remembrance of Albert.

We headed out to dinner, and were joined by a couple of club member for chow – Mary Ellen & John Blasé. After dinner we visited their train layout and ran a few trains.

The next day I visited the St. Louis Museum of Transportation. I was very impressed with the extent of the train and car collections. I gave the old GG-1 a loving pat. (I have a scale Weaver brass GG-1 that I have upgraded with TMCC – one of my favorite engines.)

I stopped by for a quick visit with a friend who is involved with audio and tape recorders, and then I headed across the river to meet David Gummersheimer. He was busy packing for his trip to TCA in York, PA. His camper trailer is a caboose replica that is scaled down to fit on a boat trailer chassis. What a kick! He has a flat screen TV, DVD player and surround sound! Needless to say, the trailer caused quite a stir at York. David didn’t get much of a chance to cruise the halls because everyone wanted to look at his trailer!

I drove out of the St. Louis area and found a motel for the night. Next morning I made a quick stop in Metropolis, IL to buy a refrigerator magnet, and then headed to Clarksville, TN.

My host in Clarksville was Leapin’ Larry Levin, a top-notch salesman at the local Honda dealer. Larry took a couple days off work to tour around the area, showing me train layouts. You just gotta love this guy!!

On the way to Larry’s house we stopped off to visit Jerry Hill’s layout. Jerry’s garage layout has nice scenery and a pleasant “feel”. Jerry also shared some of his other collections inside the house.

Larry’s basement layout is a very nice multilevel design with an embedded helix to make operating interesting. He also has a nice turntable with parking for several of his fine locomotives.

Now the intense part of the trip began! Larry had scheduled visits to several layouts in an area that ranged all the way to Madisonville KY, Evanston IN and Nashville TN. We had a “tour group” of several of the layout owners traveling around together to see each others layouts. We had a VERY good time!

All the layouts were different. We had layouts in the rafters of a garage, multiple rooms in the basement and everything in between. The thing that kept coming back to me is that there is no right or wrong when you are building YOUR layout. All of these layouts were completely different, but each represented the fantasy world of the layout’s creator. Some folks like to run trains, and their emphasis is on storage yards and track loops. Others are interested in fine detailing of scenery, buildings and trains. Sometimes the layout is shaped by the available space (and the other person who shares that space.) The variety was most refreshing.

It also made me realize that our magazines do the hobby a disservice by always featuring the exotic layouts. Most of us are not in that league, but that doesn’t make us wrong. Why not feature a layout that runs on the rafters in the garage or shoehorned into a tight spot? It may not have full scenery, but it can trigger ideas of how the folks who don’t have large train rooms can make a layout fit their constraints.

Now, climbing down off my soapbox….

We took a trip up north, stopping first at Madisonville KY to see a well established layout where Rick Hane and Wally Watts park and run a lot of postwar Lionel. I favor the postwar equipment myself, and I enjoyed seeing the variety. The main lines extend around the wall so that a train can be pulled out of the large yard and then run around the perimeter a few times before re-parking in the yard.

Next we headed to Evansville IN to see a couple of layouts. When you arrive at Jim Bengert’s house, the first thing you notice is a full-size grade crossing signal next to the entry to his layout. You enter into an area with a town and mine on either side, but then you proceed to the main area with a lot more going on. Jim has a nice variety of landscaping and scenery.

Entry Area

I also enjoyed admiring Jim’s Honda Gold Wing motorcycle. Thirty years ago I had my Honda 750…..

Next stop in Evansville was Larry Fieber’s garage overhead layout. (Well, we did squeeze in lunch at a great barbeque place into the schedule at lunch time.) This shows how there is always a way to make room for a layout. (Actually, I thought Larry should be running the trains upside down overhead….)

Next stop was Johnny Dawson’s house in the countryside near Owensboro KY. Johnny has a huge basement that he is filling with a new layout. He has most of the track laid so that he can run trains around, but there isn’t any scenery yet.

As a side note, I was dragging my oscilloscope along on the trip, measuring the TMCC/Legacy track signal on various layouts. When I checked Johnny’s Command Base, I found that the signal was clipped on the lower loop. We substituted another Base that had a proper symmetric signal. I had also found a bad Base at Lyle’s museum. It might not be that rare!

There we were, driving down the highway, crossing over some train tracks when all at once we saw this!!

There was a screeching of tires as we halted to take a closer look at the Fallen Flags paint job. The locomotive was just sitting there, waiting for us to arrive and take photos. What a thrill to see this in real life!! (Did I mention that I had a NYC F3 when I was a kid? And that I was born in Buffalo, NY?)

Our trip back to Clarksville brought us into a heavy rainstorm as we got back into Tennessee. It was a dark and windy night…..

Background:

The Dumont Museum has two large train layouts and an extensive Oliver tractor display housed in a steel building.  The smaller layout is about 15’ x 20’ with fairly simple loops of track on the flat and in a mountain.  This layout operates properly.

The larger layout is located in an adjacent room that is 60’ x 100’.  This layout is composed of two sections with interconnecting bridges that cover about 45’ x 90’.  This layout has problems with Legacy operation due to weak track signals.

Lyle Dumont and I have spoken about the problems on a number of occasions, but have been unable to resolve the issues.  I volunteered to visit so that we could tackle the problem first-hand.

The visit:

Day One – Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012

The first step was to hook up and oscilloscope to the Track output of the Legacy Base.  I used an isolation transformer on the oscilloscope to permit me to establish an arbitrary ground reference.  (The Legacy/TMCC track signal is referenced to ground through the wallwart.  I thought I might need to reference to other points.)

A quick examination showed that the 455 KHz track signal was being cleanly chopped off on the lower half cycle.  The wire to the track was removed to unload the output, but the output was still cleanly chopped off.

I have seen this distorted output before, including my own Legacy Base that I acquired because it needed repair.  The output amplifier components include several capacitors and a driver transistor.

Conclusion #1 – The Base was probably damaged by a nearby lightning strike that caused damage to several electronic devices in the adjacent Dumont home and the air conditioning thermostat in the museum.

Action #1 – We borrowed the Base from the smaller layout, and it had a proper unclipped signal of 5 volts peak-to-peak without any load.

Next, we moved on to examine the troublesome areas on the layout.  The older east section was operating fairly well, but the newer west section was very poor.  This newer area had been constructed with aluminum foil duct tape laid under all of the track roadbed, on top of the tables.  (Foil tape had also been added to the east section, but well after construction.  This foil is under the table, in some cases wrapping over support beams and other construction obstacles.)

Initially, the foil was tied together, but not connected to earth ground.  We soon tried tying the foil to ground, but this caused a serious drop in track signal level and bad waveform distortion on the negative half cycle.  We experimented with several configuration of foil grounding, but could not clean up the waveform.

Conclusion #2 – You can actually have too much foil!  In this case we had somewhere between 300 and 500 feet of track with foil very close to the track.  Most of the track in this area is Gargraves-like track with non-conductive ties, but there is also some tubular S-gauge track.  The equivalent area of 500’ of 2-inch-wide tape is about 80 square feet of aluminum foil!  This foil is located in close proximity to the other half of the command signal, which is on three rails of the track, forming a very significant equivalent capacitor.  The amplitude drop and distortion on the lower half of the track signal are typical for the output stage when it is overloaded with capacitance.  I didn’t have a capacitance meter, nor did I have an assortment of capacitors that I might have used to try to simulate the observed waveform with lumped values.  This will need to wait until I return home.

With the massive amounts of foil acting as an enemy, we moved on to Plan B.  Lyle had installed some discrete wires next to the track.  Some of these wires were exposed, but he had covered some of the wires with glued gravel ballast.

Some of the wires worked well, but some produced the heavy loading we saw with the grounded foil.  We finally noticed that some of the staples holding the wire next to the track were stapled into the foil, and some of these staples pinched the wires enough to cut through the insulation to connect the wire to the foil.  The bare wires were fairly easy to troubleshoot, but the ballasted areas were a big problem.  In some cases we chose to abandon the buried wires and temporarily add new wires on top of the ballast.

The wire grid of earth grounds was considerably less capacitance than the foil, giving us less signal drop, but still about a 30% drop and some negative-loop distortion.

Our test engines were a Legacy Santa Fe 3751 4-8-4 and a Milwaukee 261 4-8-4.  Lyle had found that the steamers were more troublesome than the plastic-shell diesels.  (Does anyone have information to share on the command signal performance of these locomotives?)

Even with the wires running between tracks, we still had some areas where the steamers would flash their headlights or even stop.

Conclusion #3 – I am going to build a combination track signal booster and signal strength meter that can be used to measure drops in signal level due to loading by capacitance.  The booster will feature a symmetric amplifier with some voltage gain but primarily enough output current capability to avoid distorting one half of the track signal.

When we finished after two days, things were better, but not yet perfect.  Lyle will do the beta testing of the MANCO Track Signal Booster/Meter.

Lyle and his wife Helen were wonderful hosts.  I thoroughly enjoyed my visit and their great hospitality.  Lyle and I worked long and hard, but we had a great time.  (And then there was that terrific grilled pork sirloin sandwich….)  I feel that I am very lucky to be able to visit and help wonderful people like the Dumonts!

UPDATE 5/8/13

I have built a booster amplifier based upon the vacuum tube design of Jim Lefevre, adding a few embellishments of my own.  I hope to test the amp on some large layouts in the near future.