Another granddaughter visit; this time a rising 3rd grader, and some interest in the paper mill addition. Mixed and applied a little "ground goop". Also installed a few store-bought trees and two hand-made trees; a grape stem by granddaughter and a tomato stem by me. Both used hair spray for glue and polyfiber plus large, green turf with burnt turf added in. Ground cover is same as "leaves" on trees. Looks pretty good from where I'm standing!
Well, two granddaughters visited to join us in a banquet but we just HAD to check out possibilities for additional scenicking with the Fathers Day gifts they had gifted! The older granddaughter, rising senior in college, was most interested in being a train engineer. Although I KNOW she's a very smart young lady, we had a hard time ensuring the long-long-short-long horn was sounded befor the crossing. You'd think that with the layout named "Blacktop CROSSING", knowing the proper crossing signal would be important.
The younger granddaughter, rising senior in high school, did seem to approve of earlier work with scenicking from the gifts. She also thought another dog should be placed in the park near Mill Hill. She picked out an appropriate canine. We forgot to name him, but for the time being we'll call him Bernie the St. Benard.
You might note that Mr. Terry has loaned one of his canons to the park -- if Mayberry can have a city canon, so can our Mill Village!
Frankly, I have just about everything a guy could want, but I do get spoiled on Father's Day and other gift-giving occasions. This year for Father's Day, some of my son's family made a stop or TWO at New Brookland RR & Hobby shop in Columbia, SC. The spoils of those stops became apparent June 18. There are plenty of figures and a good bit of bushes inventory yet to be used, but here's a start!
Several garbage cans were picked from the Woodland Scenics "Junk" selection. This could improve the sanitation on Mill Hill. The retired couple put a can neatly in the back corner of their neatly trimmed hedge, of course. The family with kids is trying to be neat but evidently one of the kids used the top of the can as a shield playing knights of the round table. She didn't do a very good job of putting the top back on.. . .
The Greaser's (maybe I'll do a little searching on this blog to come up with their names, but for the moment they are all forgotten -- later: someone needs to index these posts, still don't know individual names but the family is the MILLners) have a new junk frame and flathead engine to deal with. Maybe they should move the chassis out of the walkway/path! Manana. . . .
With a good bit of help from Erik at Tony's Trains Exchange and input from a DCC forum, I made a choice for placing gaps/insulators in the "reversing wye". The hope was to allow working the woodyard on the top track while bringing chemicals in and taking paper out on the bottom two/three tracks. That is, two locos working the 2X8' extension at the same time.
As shown in the earlier post, I think we can claim success. For clarification, I chose the "green" gaps in this sketch (of colored options!):
OK, so Tony's Trains PSXX and PSXX-AR -- I think you might call them a circuit breaker and an auto-reverse -- are now installed after I got the last Flextrack in place. And, they work! First try, got a short notice (red light). Oh, sure, the new piece of Flextrack is wired different than the siding, color-wise. Fixed that by changing the siding wires. Oops, STILL have short according to PSXX. Well, dang, the wye leg has four OTHER drops. So, swapped siding wiring back and swapped new Flextrack drops. BINGO!
Well, you have to trust me that I never picked up the locomotive, but I had to shorten video to upload. I did add a little Roy Acuff. . . .
Sometimes you wonder. . . . I told "The Wife" that I was using black and red wires for the buss and white and red wires for the drops while wiring the new section. Would have preferred black and red for both, but all I have to do is connect red to red. So, what did I do:
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| NOT Red to Black!! |
Making progress on Panama City, FL, paper mill in relatively small steps, it seems.
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| Roadbed |
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| Track |
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| Small Connector -- upper right |
