A new year begins and with it comes some new toys. Where has the "Rix Rail-it Rerailing Ramp" been all my life? As the above video demonstrates, this $5.00 piece of plastic makes it baby simple to put locomotives and cars on the track. Although veteran model railroaders become quite proficient at doing this manually, this device makes it so easy a four year old can (and will) do it.

The USB port on one of the handheld controllers went bad so we sent the unit in for repair. It returned with a new USB port as well as a new set of rechargeable batteries. Unfortunately, all the saved locomotive images/parameters were gone. John had to put all 24 locomotives on the track and re-discover them.

While Terry was running GP40 #3015 last week it started acting crazy and eventually lost radio signal. During train night Rick popped off the shell to take a peek inside. He reseated the control module and checked all wiring. He also used Q-tips to clean all the wheels. Check out the filthy Q-tips in his left hand!

Rick did a test run of the locomotive and found all issues were fixed. He set up a simple consist and then had Terry come up to try another run. She was able to successfully run the train several times around the track. She will return in the future to use the rerailing ramp to create her own consist. How fun!

The east end of the foam board at the Anchorage Depot was sagging due to no support system. Rick developed and created this wooden block structure to provide the much needed support.

The first part of the wooden block is screwed to the underneath side of the road bed. Care must be taken to ensure the screw does not pop up into the track. The shelf piece was cut to provide the correct height for the foam board. Indeed it provided a seamless transition from the foam board to the road bed.

While John and Terry were vacationing in Florida Rick stopped by to do several tasks. First, he put in a black railroad crossing panel at the Whittier depot. This will enable railroad workers to walk across the siding into the shipping area adjacent to the barge. The white arrow shows a small section of the panel. Rick uses weights to hold the panel in place while the glue sets. During train night, John did some paint touch up work on the panel.

Rick also finishes the installation of the supports (shown by the red arrows) for the Anchorage depot foam board. Here is a look at the supports at the south end.

The mainline has not been cleaned for several months so John sends out two Heritage units with the CMX Clean Machine Track Cleaning Car. Six pads were used five times each. Thirty cleaning runs leave the rails nice and shiny.

Rick continues his work with Liquid Nails to secure the foam board in place. Tonight his work enters into the double track area.