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.
2021-06-05 - Work Update: T80+T90 and Siding B91
Category RandallToday we are working on the siding B91, located between turnouts T80 and T90. It has been unused for quite a while. Turnouts T80 and T90 still work fine. After carefully scrubbing the track on the siding to clean it, it worked fairly well.
A steam train enters the siding at T90.
On the other side at T80, we have 3 electromagnet uncouplers:
When trying the turnouts, we had issues with a train that stopped at that location and when reversing some coupler got stuck on the uncoupler. So I may want to take them away to prevent that from happening.
Interestingly, these electromagnet uncouplers are not connected under the layout. They never were, the wires are just dangling and look “brand new”. These seem to have been installed in the original layout design on all siding locations.
I labelled the turnouts on the Valley panel to match the sign on the wall:
These labels are temporary. I need to print new ones and install them.
Same goes for the sign on the concrete pillar in the first picture. Goal is to print a proper sign, and most important to wire status LEDs that will light up yellow when both turnouts are divergent, as a reminder that the mainline is not properly aligned.