Two noteworthy changes this week-end. One day everything is fine, and the next day both the Mainline and Branchline decide to have problems at the same time. Oh well.

That mainline solder fix I did couple weeks ago already broke, so I went back and tried to do a better job at it:

Second repair on the B321 block. Read the details here.

On the Branchline side, SP GP9 #3566 decided to stop cooperating. Engine had been working fine for a couple weeks and suddenly it would get stuck, with one of the trucks binding on one of the dual-gauge turnouts. That’s fairly unusual. Most of the time it’s the little coupler “hose” that gets stuck, but here it was one of the wheels bumping on some kind of invisible thing. The Branchline unfortunately features dual-gauge tracks, which makes the turnouts ridiculously mechanically complex, and for some reason the GP9 truck was getting stuck there but oddly enough only from time to time. Trying to clean the offending turnout didn’t help, and it’s intermittent so I don’t think it’s a debris issue.

So I decided it was time for a change again. And now we have this on the Branchline:

Amtrak EMD F40PH (Rapido) on the Branchline.

The engine is one of the two Rapido Amtrak F40PH we have. Here it is in action:

I haven’t been able to run these F40PH on the mainline since 2018, as they unfortunately derail there in very specific spots, even after trying to fine tune them. However I just realize the issue only occurs at higher speeds than what we use on the Branchline. Thus I tried one of the F40PH on Saturday, and it performed very well. Not only that, I also got immediate positive feedback from the visitors glad to see an Amtrak engine running around.