July 7, 2021
TwentyMile Bridge construction TwentyMile Bridge construction TwentyMile Bridge construction
Mikel Levine is working diligently on TwentyMile bridge. He says of the project, "I reached a milestone on your bridge this weekend! The five spans are complete, with the exception of the bracing on the bottom. The next step will be extending every fourth tie on the deck for the walkway. Then I will start on the piers and pilings. I feel like I am on the downhill side of this project, finally." Here is a photo of the five completed spans. The five spans placed end-to-end. The actual span length.
TwentyMile Bridge construction TwentyMile Bridge construction TwentyMile Bridge construction
Here is a photo of a span with the deck placed on top as a sense of what is to come. Just for fun, the decking the entire length. "I realized that it would help to have a little more perspective on the size of the bridge. And to think we eliminated two spans!"
New puppy named Chewy Twin's birthday dessert Twins playing kitch and trains
Our twin grandsons are celebrating their fourth birthday and stopped by at the end of our train night meal. They brought their brand new puppy Chewy with them. Obviously this Cavalier King Charles Spaniel had a busy day as she couldn't keep her head up to eat a little dessert. It was a shame she missed it as the ice cream came with brownie, hot fudge and hot peanut butter toppings, Reece pieces, sprinkles and whipped cream. Twins Shane and Cody love planning in the train room. The adjacent wooden kitchen set (made by grandpa John and their great grandpa Doug) provides great culinary entertainment. Where else can you have waffles and potato chips with a bacon sandwich? While preparing food they love watching the trains run and their favorite consist includes a flat car with a pair of John Deere farm tractors.
Block indicator lights Running trains  

The layout is divided into seven blocks each controlled by a CB-1 (circuit breaker) module or an AR-1 (auto reverse) module. These are mounted under the layout and have a status light. If we encounter an issue it is a real pain to get on our knees to check the status light. Rick came up with an idea of running additional status lights to a location above board for easy monitoring. For now he has made a temporary wooden stand to hold three CB-1s and one AR-1 status light. If the CB-1 light is blue then the segment is good. If it is off then there is a short circuit. The AR-1 has two lights to indicate polarity. You may recall a reverse loop allows a train to change direction without going in reverse and thus a change in voltage polarity is required. [Sorry for the poor quality of the photo above.]

Over the next few train nights Rick will construct a panel for all six of the CB-1s and the AR-1. This will be mounted in the fascia at my main operational spot near the Portage Depot.

 Rick and I spent the majority of the evening running trains and looking for possible RailPro ghosts. Here is a video of a pair of SD70MACs double heading through TwentyMile. RailPro makes it easy to run multiple locomotives and the radio capability ensures speed matching between the units.  

 

July 14, 2021
7002 7002 Panel
Rick removed the rear truck from 7002. This picture shows where he was able to short the right to left rail (see red arrow). Normally this would not be possible. The centrifugal force would keep the axle closest to the red arrow to the left and away from the rail just to the right of the left wheel. Rick could not cause a short going straight through the turnout – only through the diverging route. The high speed turnout is the only place where 7002 has stopped on a diverging route. Rick thinks something else is happening when crossing a turnout as we have not seen a LED on the monitor turn off. We could spend hours trying to figure out what is causing #7002's disconnects and even then may come up empty handed. However, adding a Keep-Alive to the unit makes all the problems go away. Therefore, we take the path of least resistance so we can move on to more important matters. We decide to re-introduce Keep-Alives to all locomotives over time. Rick runs the wires to add another CB-1status LED to our temporary display.
TwentyMile Bridge construction Consolidation Max
In true contortion fashion Rick snakes his way under the table to run new power wires to one of the CB-1s. When he finishes all adjacent CB-1s will be on the same power supply. Although this may be an unnecessary effort it keeps CB-1s logically grouped. Power supply north will handle purple (Anchorage yard), turquoise (Whittier) and yellow (Usibelli Coal Mine) blocks. Power supply north will handle red double track), green (Portage and TwentyMile), brown (APU and AML) and blue (reverse loop) power blocks. Rick carefully documents the power block changes. Max shares information on pet friendly railroads. He hopes to be able to ride the rails someday.
Keep-Alive Keep-Alive  
F7B #1517 makes a habit of stopping between the blue and green segments. The cause was undetermined so we added one of RailPro's new PBM-2 Keep-Alives (two blue capacitors at right). The result is trouble free operations. We would like to put these new Keep-Alives in all locomotives, but can't due to their larger size.  

 

 

Feel free to contact me at john@alaskarails.org
Page created 9/4/17 and last updated 8/5/21