I just arrived back from what was probably the most insane trip I've ever taken.  Two friends and I decided that we'd make a trip to the Steam Railroading Institute's Train Festival 2009.  We also decided that to save money, we'd be taking this trip by car.

So Tuesday afternoon, I left my office in Albany, headed to Saugerties to grab my friend Rob, then headed down to New Jersey to get our friend Matt.  At Matt's place, we transferred our stuff into his 1992 Buick Roadmaster wagon (a.k.a. the Road Monster), and headed out.  After leaving New Jersey, we drove through the night across Pennsylvania and most of the way across Ohio, to a little town called Fostoria.

Fostoria is an interesting town.  And by interesting, I mean that it's probably one of the most awful places in the country to live.  There's pretty much nothing in the town, with the exception of the THREE double-track main lines that pass through it.  On an average day, Fostoria will see 100 or more trains pass through.  We arrived at 5:15 AM and stayed only 3 hours, but caught 18 trains passing through, including one made entirely of Triple Crown bimodal RoadRailer trailers, which I'd never seen before.

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The rest of Wednesday consisted of driving the rest of the way to Owosso, MI, where the festival was being held, finding our hotel in Flint, MI, and recovering from our ridiculously long drive.

Thursday morning, we got up at about 6:00, got dressed quickly, and headed back to Owosso.  After breakfast at Tim Horton's (why are there none of these around here!?), we went over to the station to get in line to board our excursion train, pulled by the Southern Pacific GS-4 #4449 "Northern", the only operating streamlined locomotive remaining anywhere in the world, which is painted in the SP's beautiful "Daylight" color scheme.  The weather was absolutely terrible while we were waiting to board, but as the train traveled to Alma, the skies brightened, and it turned out to be a rather nice day.  After a three hour layover in Alma, we got back on the train and headed back to Owosso, with a nice photo run-by in the middle.

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After arriving back in Owosso, we looked around outside the festival to see what else was there, but didn't go in, since there was only about half an hour left that day.  Running near the edge of the property was a 7.5" miniature railroad line, which had some neat equipment.  After leaving, we headed down to Durand, MI to see the old station there and see whatever trains we could.

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Friday morning, we headed out to Owosso again, this time to actually go to the festival.  In the yard, we saw the other 7 steam locomotives that were at the festival.  There were sister "Berkshire" 2-8-4 engines, Nickel Plate #765 and Perre Marquette #1225, three 0-4-0T tank engines, Flagg Coal #75, Little River Railroad #1, and Viscoe #6, the smallest 2-6-4 in the US, Little River Railroad #110, and the newest steam locomotive in the world, the hand-built near-perfect recreation of the circa 1860's Central Pacific #63 "Leviathan".

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Also at the festival were several model railroads, including an 'L'-gauge layout owned by the Michigan LEGO Users Group, who had their own version of the SP 4449.

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In the afternoon Friday, we drove up to Alma to chase the 4449 back to Owosso and get some nice pictures of it and its beautiful trainset in operation.

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Saturday, after checking out of the hotel and doing some shopping, we headed up to Alma again, this time to chase the train being pulled by the Nickel Plate #765.  This trip was supposed to be behind Perre Marquette #1225, but apparently one of its superheater pipes burst and it was unable to operate, so the 765 took over for it.

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And that was it.  We loaded back up into the Road Monster and set off to return home.  We made a quick detour to see Norfolk Southern's Bellevue, OH yard, and arrived back at Matt's at about 6 AM on Sunday.

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So I'm back to work...  The break was good, and seeing family was good, too.

Got a flat tire on my way back to Albany yesterday, which Sarah and I had to change on the side of the Thruway.  Not fun.  Also slightly aggravated about the fact that my tire pressure monitoring system never mentioned anything about it.  I have an appointment with the VW dealership tomorrow to have the tire repaired or replaced.  Should be covered under my warranty (I specifically got a tire/wheel warranty), so it shouldn't cost more than a deductible.  C'est la vie, I suppose.

My dad gave me a HO-scale stock car that apparently makes chicken sounds.  I need to wire up a section of track when I get home to try it out.

I did get the Harmony all working yesterday.  It is super-cool.

I've returned to civilization. I would have posted again while in Cass, but in addition to the fact that it's in the middle of nowhere and I wouldn't really expect there to be cell towers anyway, Cass is apparently located in the National Radio Quiet Zone. The NRQZ was established in the valley around the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, a 110-meter diameter radio astronomy telescope. There are no cell towers, radio stations, over the air TV or any other kind of radio transmitters anywhere in that valley that can transmit above a rather low power output. So, yeah, we were pretty isolated.

Anyway, I'm going to do this a little differently than I usually write, and take advantage of the "integration" I set up between my blog and my photo gallery...

The reason I went to Cass was to catch the Cass Scenic Railroad's annual Railfan Weekend, and see their impressive collection of operating geared steam locomotives, which have fascinated me for quite a long time. Of particular interest to me is the Shay-class locomotive, invented by Ephraim Shay and manufactured by the Lima Locomotive Works. The Shay was essentially the first geared steam locomotive, and Cass owns 5 working units, in addition to two other geared steam locomotives.

1.184022.18420Geared steam locomotives are quite different from regular locomotives because the pistons do not directly drive the wheels, but rather use a kind of primitive drivetrain, similar to that of a car [1]. The gears connecting the driveshaft into the wheels uses a rather large reduction factor, resulting in an engine that can produce an absolutely massive amount of torque [2]. These engines were especially well suited for climbing up very steep grades, which were common for logging or mining railroads (the Cass Scenic Railroad was formerly the Mower Lumber Company's private logging railroad). The tradeoff to this design was that these engines were limited to extremely slow speeds (the reduction gears were fixed, not variable like in a modern transmission), but speed was not of particular concern when the goal was just to get the logs or coal down the mountain, where the cars would then be picked up by conventional locomotives and taken away.

3.182464.18270On Thursday, we started our journey from my mom's house in New Jersey, where I met up with Rob and his dad. Our first stop was in Cumberland, MD, to see the yard that CSX operates there [3], along with the old Western Maryland train station which is in use now as the starting point of excursion trips (we arrived too late in the day to see or ride on that train) [4].

5.182916.18315After leaving Cumberland, we made our way down to Elkins, WV, to ride on an excursion train operated by the Durbin and Greenbriar Valley Railroad's restored line along the former Western Maryland Railroad line on restored Western Maryland equipment. Got some decent photos in, even though the weather was not particularly cooperative. [5, 6]

7.183368.183879.1841710.18351We got back to Elkins in the afternoon, hopped in the car, and headed down to Cass. Took about an hour and a half to get there, at which point we checked into our house. [7] The town of Cass, WV was a company town. The Mower Lumber Company built and owned every single building in the town, and pretty much everyone that lived there worked for them in some respect. The state park now controls the town, and all of the company houses (that are still structurally sound) are rented out as places to stay when you're visiting the railroad. After checking in and getting settled in our house, we wandered around the station and the shop complex and saw all of the locos sitting outside, all fired up. [8, 9] We also saw the ruins of the lumber mill, which unfortunately burned down... twice. [10]

11.1849212.18645Saturday morning started our first trip up the mountain. We climbed up the steep winding track 6 miles to the town of Spruce, also a company town. Spruce is a ghost town in the true sense of the word. Not only does no one live there, but there aren't any buildings there anymore, either. The town of Spruce once was home to about 100 - 150 lumber company employees, most of which worked the pulp mill which was located here. Interestingly, the town never had any roads built to it. The only way in or out was by the railroad. In 1927, the pulp mill shut down and the town was abandoned, but in 1929, the Western Maryland Railroad opened it back up and repurposed the town as a service stop on their railroad. They built the big horseshoe track which is all that remains now. At Spruce, we took pictures of the passenger train that hauled us up the hill, a freight train, and the freight train pulled by the WM diesels that we saw the day before out of Elkins (they came up the line from the other direction, and they meet at Spruce). [11] We also shot the trains further down the line for a while. On the way back, we rode in the cupola in one of the cabooses. [12]

13.1867814.1868415.18696Saturday night back in Cass was a night photo session, where they staged the locos in front of the station with massive amounts of light, and people dressed in period-appropriate clothing. Got some really amazing shots, which I'm rather proud of. [13, 14, 15]

Sunday was more shooting along the line, but we only went half way up the hill to Whittaker. The weather was pretty terrible, as it was raining rather hard and was very windy. I stayed on the train most of the time, since I didn't want my camera (or me) to get soaked. After we got back to Cass shortly after 2, we got back in my car and started the long trek back to New Jersey.

So that was my weekend. You can take a look at all the rest of my photos by clicking on the picture below.

So... I'm in West Virginia. If you find yourself asking why, it's because the Cass Scenic Railroad Railfan Weekend is this weekend, and I've wanted to go to it for years.

The drive down was pretty nice, for the most part.  We stopped over in Cumberland, MD to check out what was there and to eat dinner and whatnot...  Unfortunately when we got to the point in the trip when we started going up and over the mountains in WV on the roads that have dozens of switchbacks, it started raining...  A little nerve racking, but we made it in one piece.

So right now we're in Elkins, where we're going to ride an excursion train on the old Western Maryland.  That train leaves at 8:30 tomorrow morning and returns "around 3".  Should be fun.

After we get back from that trip, we drive the hour or so down to Cass to see the Shays.  We're there Saturday and Sunday, and leave Sunday afternoon to head back to NJ.

So...  This should be a good weekend, assuming the weather is ok...  The forecast right now isn't that great, but hopefully it'll get better.

Oh, and I should point out that while Internet access via cellphone is cool, but it's hella slow when you're on a 1xRTT connection (speeds top out around 14 Kbps).  Apparently the middle of nowhere West Virginia isn't high on Sprint's priority list for rolling out mobile broadband.

Whew...  Finally a weekend to relax, kind of.  Sarah and I went to visit my mom for her birthday (early), and later today we're all going to my grandparents' house.  But we both got to sleep in today, which was needed, and it gets us away from the insanity that is our lives.

The wedding is getting really close...  8 weeks from today.  Fortunately, almost everything is set.  Just a few things left to do, and then...  Just wait...

I picked up a bunch of engines at the show in Springfield two weeks ago.  They're nice.  Unfortunately, the show has shown me that I'm going to have a tough time getting rolling stock to fit my time period.  I think eBay is going to have to be my friend.  Hopefully after the wedding I'll have some time (and some money) to start building again.  I really would like to get my layout moving.  Oh well.  I guess I have the rest of my life to get it finished.

Alright, that's all for now.  'Till next time...

Yay! My car is fixed. My speculation was correct, and the problem was with the alternator. And the repair only cost me $203.04. Not too shabby.
16789Cruise photos are now online.
16786Also, I've decided to make a major change to my model railroad design... I will no longer be modeling in HO scale. I will instead use N scale. This will give me a tremendous amount of additional space. I have a preliminary track plan, which you can see, is much more complex.

Hrm...  I keep not having time to post.  Damnit.

It's Friday, and I'm at work.  I'm not supposed to be at work, but my boss asked me yesterday to work today instead of Sunday, so I said that was alright.  Unfortunately, I'm missing out on going golfing, but oh well...  At least I'll get a day to sleep on Sunday.

Last Thursday, Sarah and I went up to SPAC to see the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, with special guest Itzhak Perlman.   Very enjoyable, and damn, is he good.

Last weekend was crazy.  I left my house in the early afternoon on Friday and drove down to NJ to work at the operating session at Rob's club.  It was fun, but a bunch of people screwed stuff up, so it was kind of hectic at times.  After the session, drove to my parents' house to sleep (they were out of town).  Got there at about 1:00 in the morning, went to sleep and got up at 7:30, so I could get ready and drive back to Schenectady, so we could go to another concert at 2.  Also enjoyable.

This week's been interesting at work.  They (Xerox corporate) decided to move us over to the corporate expense tracking/billing software, which compared to our old software (which, by the way, was a piece of shit) is... a piece of shit.  Besides being a UI nightmare, is apparently unstable and incapable of supporting the load we're going to put on it, and takes about 10x longer to use than its predecessor.  Yay corporate decision-making.

6 days to the cruise!

Damnit...  I haven't updated in a while.  That's not good.

I've been rather busy the last few weeks.   It also occurs to me that I haven't really done anything all that interesting...  Hmm...

Work's been a lot less hectic over the last few weeks, but certain issues which I'm not really at liberty to discuss publicly are causing me some amount of aggravation.  Not really sure what I can do about it, though.

I slightly redesigned the track plan for my layout to fix some issues with the original design, but this new design has some rather serious flaws of its own, so I'm going to sit down with Rob at some point and fix it.  Rob's much better at this stuff than me.

Anyway, I should post more.  I should also stop having all of my time consumed with things that aren't interesting to write about.  Oh well.

Sarah and I returned from Canada today.  It was a very nice trip.  The hotel was beautiful, we had fun and didn't lose all that much money at the casino, and we enjoyed a day at La Ronde, which appeared to me hiding the fact that it's actually owned by Six Flags.

As I stated before, we decided to take the trip by rail, via Amtrak's Adirondack service.  Though I am a big fan of the railroads, I'd never actually used a non-commuter railroad as a means of transport for pleasure.  I'd used New Jersey Transit (plus the other commuter rail systems in the New York metropolitan area) plenty of times to get into and around Manhattan, and Amtrak to get from RPI to my parents' house (technically, to New York, then NJT to my parents'), but never before have I taken a trip like this.  Now having done it, I'm glad that I did, and would definitely consider taking another trip.

Friday started out reasonably.  We got to Schenectady station a little early, only to find out that the train was running a bit behind.  To complicate things a bit more, a southbound train was also running behind, and was blocking the single-track line.  Our train made it to just east of the station, but sat there for a while waiting for the southbound.  Once the southbound left, our train pulled in, loaded up, and pulled out.  We probably pulled out at around noon, about 45 minutes behind schedule.

The ride north was pretty slow.  It would appear that Canadien National's track is in need of a bit of repair.  The line was a bit rough in some parts, and we were running with some drastic speed restrictions through many areas.  While our train was pulling into the station in Schenectady, actually, a CN rail train snuck by us to start heading up the line.  I was concerned that we might be stuck behind it for a large portion of the trip, but unlike CSX, CN actually follows the FRA mandate that Amtrak trains should get priority when possible.  We quickly passed the track train, which was holed at the very next yard north of Schenectady.

We made our way northward, slowly but surely at times, through the farms that really aren't all that far away from here, then along the banks of the absolutely beautiful Lake Champlain.  The line runs in a cut which is literally right on the shore.  The designers of the railroad could have opted to put their line a few more feet inland, which would have left a line of trees between the rail and the lake, but they instead opted to give their passengers some spectacular views to look at.  Very impressive and thoughtful, for a line that is nearly 150 years old.

North of Lake Champlain (which, by the way, is in view for probably about half of the trip), we passed through some dairy farms, and then the border to Canada.  Shortly after the border, the train stopped and was boarded by Canadian border patrol officers, who interviewed all of the passengers, determining whatever it is that border patrol officers do.  This check took longer than anticipated, for whatever reason, which put us even further behind schedule, but, as the French would say, c'est la vie.  The trip from the border to Montréal was much of the same; slow moving due to track construction, and we arrived at about 8:00, making the total trip time about 8 hours.

The trip back down today was similar, though apparently a number of the speed restrictions were lifted, as we did hit much higher speeds today.  We were delayed a bit, again because of trains occupying single-tracked areas, and also because of work.  We actually passed the track train that we'd see on Friday, which was on a siding and actively laying track.  Though I only caught a quick glimpse of it as we passed, it was the first and only time I've ever actually seen a tracklayer in action.  It's quite an impressive machine.  Anyway, we arrived back in Schenectady without issue.  Interestingly, the customs officers on the way down seemed to process us faster than on the way up.  Much of this is probably due to the fact that the bulk of the train's passengers were US citizens, who were processed very quickly, but it seemed to me that the Canadian family that was sitting behind us was processed much more quickly than we were on our way up.

Anyway, now that I've made that nice long story, I can finally get to my point...  Now having done it myself, I can say with confidence that for intermediate-distance trips, I believe that train travel is far superior to any other means of transportation.  Now, one might argue that we could have gotten from Schenectady to Montréal much quicker by car or airplane than by train.  To those arguments I give the following counterpoints:

• Driving would have taken about 4 hours, not including rest stops.  Figuring those in, plus time in customs, it probably would have been closer to 6.  A 6 hour car trip is very tiring, and in the end, would have ended with the same result: a full day travel in each direction.
• I-87 is boring.  There's really no scenery to look at, and for the driver, that doesn't really matter.  On the train, we both had beautiful scenery to watch.
• The FAA requests that passengers arrive at airports two hours before departing on international flights.  As the train is guaranteed not to leave early (even if the train was running ahead of schedule, the train would have sat in the station until the scheduled departure time), we technically didn't need to be at the station until about 5 minutes before our scheduled departure, though we planned to be there half an hour early.  This meant we needed to leave our house at 10:30 for the 11:15 train.  We would have had to leave at approximately 8:45 for a flight leaving at the same time (granted this is partly due to the fact that the airport is a half hour drive, whereas the train station is about 3 minutes away).
• Once arriving in Montréal by air, we would have had to stand in line for possibly several hours while going through customs.  On the train, we got to sit in the comfortable seats in the coach while watching a movie on Sarah's portable DVD player while waiting for the border patrol agents to come to us.
• Amtrak's coaches have much larger and more comfortable seats than those of coach-class on any aircraft I've ever been on.  The size and legroom actually rivals that of first-class seats on most major airlines.  And forget about comparing the seats to those of a car.  Maybe you could compare them to the seats in an RV, but I don't own an RV.  Besides, you can't recline in the driver's seat of a car (ok, you can, but that would be pretty stupid (and illegal)).
• The train is much quieter than an airplane, and does not produce sounds in the range that have been shown to cause significant drowsiness.  For the most part, the sound of the ventilation system onboard the coaches is louder than the sounds made by the train being in motion.

I could go on with my list, but it's late and I really don't feel like it anymore.  Basically, if you haven't gotten it by now, I'm saying that the train is better than flying for trips that would take about a "day" of travel regardless of the means.  If you don't believe me, try it out.  If you don't like it, don't do it again.  It's really not all that expensive, so you won't be out very much in either case.

Sarah's finally done working at the school tomorrow!  She starts her new job at Xerox on Tuesday.  To celebrate / relax, we're going up to Montréal Friday - Monday, and will be making the trip via Amtrak, which should be nice and relaxing.  I hear the scenery along that line is really nice.

Bonus points for getting the reference in the title.

I realized that since I'm going to be documenting the construction of my railroad here, I should probably also have a post about the railroad as well.

The design I've settled on is this:

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The design is an 8x12' 'L'-shape, with a single-track loop around the outside, with reversing sections in both directions. There is a yard in the front, an engine facility on the right, a town in the middle, a logging company up on the hill in the back (yeah, there's a hill in the back), and a small port on the left. I haven't exactly figured out what I'm going to do with the space where the legend is on the map right now. Maybe my Lego Star Destroyer can sit there. It would only be moderately out of place. (see update below)

The layout will be built on two 4'x8' tables, on top of which will be eight 2'x4' custom modules. The modules, rather than being built with homasote, will be built using standard hard foam insulation panels. The benefit of this design is that the layout ends up being significantly lighter, and therefore requires a significantly simpler table design. This light design, modular design will allow me to easily (relative term) move the layout when Sarah and I decide that it's time for a new home.

The time period of the layout is going to be turn-of-the-(last)-century northern United States, probably in winter time. I won't be modeling any real place, nor will I be modeling any one real railroad, though I probably won't make a fake railroad name, either. My locomotives and rolling stock will all be from real roads, but won't all be from the same one. Obviously, as dictated by the time period, all of the engines will be relatively primitive steam engines ("modern", superheated steam engines weren't invented by that time), and the railroad will lack other modern rail technologies, like electronic signaling systems. This will pose somewhat of a challenge, as engines and rolling stock of that vintage are somewhat difficult to come by, but I like that era, so that's what I'm doing.

While the topside of the layout will be relatively old, the underside will be anything but. I will be using only the latest in model railroading technology to power and control my layout. The core of my electrical system will be a North Coast Engineering Power Cab. The Power Cab is an all-in-one "starter" DCC system which has nearly all of the state-of-the-art and top-of-the-line features of NCE's larger DCC systems, but at a much lower cost.

Beyond having DCC for controlling the locomotives, however, I plan to fully integrate all of my layout control systems into DCC, which is not a very common thing to do, and something that I have never personally see. Every one of my switch machines and my turntable will be fully controlled via DCC. My "control panel" will simply be the RJ11 jacks for plugging in the cabs.

I am also considering adding a fully automated, motorized semaphore signaling system. I'm not quite sure about that, though. If I ever do it, it won't be until very late in the construction. Regardless, something like that will likely be very expensive to implement.

So, that's the plan for now. I'll keep posting updates and whatnot as time goes by. (The plan right now is to put the legs on the table tomorrow.)

Update: Duh... I crossed out the part where I said I didn't know what I'd be doing with the front section of the loop. I'm building a winter scene in North America. I obviously need there to be a frozen lake with kids playing hockey!

Oh...

I finally got some work done on my model railroad! I've been trying to work on it for weeks, but never seemed to have any free time. Yesterday, Yuri came over and we had lots of fun playing with my new power tools and hacking away at the lumber to make the first of two tables for the layout.

We would have finished the table yesterday, but we didn't plan on how many screws we'd need correctly, and ran out before attaching the legs. But the table frame is now complete (sans legs). I think it came out quite well. Now I need to finalize the design for the modules, and then I can go out and start buying and laying track! And that means I might have a moderately functional layout in only a few more weeks!

The table design is really just an open frame, as I'll be building a modular layout on top of it, and all the table needs to do is hold the modules up/in place. I'll also obviously need access to the bottom of the modules once they're installed to attach wiring and whatnot.

After stopping our work due to lack of screws, Sarah, Yuri, and I all went out to dinner, then out for some essential shopping, and back home to watch our newly acquired copy of The Prestige. Amazing movie, I must say, even having seen it before and knowing all of the secrets. Normally not the case with a movie of its genre, but damn. This is another movie that I'd recommend watching if you haven't.

Update: Here's a pic of the (currently legless) table!

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