The Randall Museum in San Francisco hosts a large HO-scale model model railroad. Created by the Golden Gate Model Railroad Club starting in 1961, the layout was donated to the Museum in 2015. Since then I have started automatizing trains running on the layout. I am also the model railroad maintainer. This blog describes various updates on the Randall project and I maintain a separate blog for all my electronics not directly related to Randall.
2019-11-21 - Passenger Automation Changes
Category RandallLooks like the Passenger train derailed:
My first reaction was to try the engine with just the caboose, and…
...turns out the coupler on the caboose does not close. Somehow it lost its spring. Amazing. Well, just flip the caboose around, problem solved for now :)
I need to fix the trucks on the second passenger car: it’s leaning on the side. It has been for a while. These are Walthers (mainline?) cars and they use truck-mounted couplers. Everybody around me see to have a disdain of these, I honestly don’t see why. I think they are just fine. However the trucks were too close to the body and were binding on the bottom of the cars, so I adjusted them by adding a spacer in between. I used whatever I had at hand and back then the only thing I found were the little washers used for couplers. These are a bit too tiny. I need to replace them with nylon washers that I have at home.
In between I rebuilt the train and it’s good to go for the automation:
