A journal following the history, design, construction and operation of Bernard Kempinski's O Scale model railroad depicting the U. S. Military Railroad (USMRR) Aquia-Falmouth line in 1863, and other model railroad projects.
©Bernard Kempinski All text and images, except as noted, on this blog are copyrighted by the author and may not be used without permission.
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September 11, 2022

First Train to New Falmouth

When the glue under the bridge dried, I spent a good part of Thursday installing the rail over the bridge and connected it to the rest of the layout.  It took me about 8 hours to do the work, but I had to take a lot of breaks as I was feeling some mild side effects from a COVID booster shot. But, I was able to get all the track and spikes on this section complete. I figure that I can lay and spike about one foot per hour. That includes 4 spikes per tie.

Friday was a busy day as Amby arrived to finish wiring the bus and feeders and I worked on the scenery at Falmouth. We had an issue with my second booster. Amby thinks the second booster may be shorting the first booster, probably due to a fault in my wiring. Fortunately, the layout works fine with just one booster. I generally run 2 or maybe 3 engines at a time. My two work horse locos are battery powered and they run through shorts and other minor problems. So we should be OK.

With the wiring sorted out using one booster, Amby took the throttle with me as the conductor.  We ran a 7 car train into Falmouth. We used the main line as the arrival track as the arrival track had 3 cars parked on it. Those cars required Amby to make some extra moves to clear the main, get to the turntable, reverse the engine, run around the train. Pick up some cars and head out of town.

Amby was the first operator to OS a train into Falmouth using the telegraph system. Everything worked pretty well as long as the conductor made sure the switches were set correctly. 



After Amby departed, I continued with adding the scenery at Falmouth. Since this part of the layout is a narrow shelf, there is a lot less vertical relief. But I did cut away some of the fascia to provide a hint that the yard at Falmouth is adjacent to the creek.

 

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