July 11

Today was a private run day. Tom Prescott came by this morning and I went out to the track with him to get him in and spend some time with his new train. A few folks got there ahead of us and Bob Bump joined us as well. He remarked that his was the furthest he has driven in recent years so I told him he was doing quite well. He had wanted to bring his son out but his boy was stuck on a keyboard and could not make it he said.

The train was working quite well and Tom told me that he had not charged the train yet. We decided to run it for awhile to see how long it would run without charging and it ran for several hours. The man he got it from told him it probably needed charging because he had not charged it lately. Tom was pleasantly surprised that the train seemed peppy and was holding the charge quite well. It uses sealed gel lead acid batteries which are very durable batteries. We used to use them in security applications at the university.

Tommy and his wife showed up and while she got out her train, he sat and talked to me and showed me Chuck Hackett's semaphore head. He has the parts plastic molded and made the circuitry PCB on his Sureline mill. It had excellent resolution on the copper foil board. I hope it works out for Chuck as a commercially produced semaphore for the hobby would make it easier for railroaders who are not electrically inclined.

Tom asked Tommy about the rocking of the riding car seat and we all delved into the problem. It turns out that the seat is firmly on the platform of the riding car and it is the bolster play as well as the truck springs are too soft. Since the riding car is a one truck car, the weight of the operator is entirely on the four springs of the truck and they are compressing about 1/2 way with just his weight on the car. Tommy thinks they could be a bit firmer and this might take some of the tippyness out of the ride. Also the bolster angle could be too great so it will be looked at a day at a time.

Tom came back from a trip on the track and asked me if I wanted to go. I said sure and got to run his new train. It is fun to operate and being so large it it rode fairly smoothly. I liked the sound generator and the last owner put in a mechanical bell that has a great sound. The air horn is too loud so we are thinking about the solution to this problem. The loco actually has a horn in the sound board and we may try hooking that up again and see if it is loud enough and sounds good enough. I got to go around several times and after figuring out that the riding car was hitting a stone by Twin Bridges I removed the rock and then the trips were quiet. The car base overhangs the side of the track about 6 inches or so.