Last year, my wife and I was at Eric Siegel's Open House, on October 18. I was impressed with his entire layout being it was the first home layout that I had seen. I've been to the Nassau Lionel Operating Engineers, The NJ Hi-Railers and train shows but his and Bill Dischinger's, the next day (Oct 19th) were the first home layouts I had seen. Overall stunning to witness both of those. My Question is I watched Eric run two train consists on his bottom levels and one on his upper level. He stopped the train on the upper level and replaced one Steam engine with another. When he replaced the train I didn't see any sparking or shorting out of the upper level track, and I was wondering what was the secret. I should have asked him immediately but I guess I was too baffled and awestruck just being there. I know his system runs off of 4 Lionel Power Bricks and other transformers, my carpet central layout for the time being (just a little bit longer...) runs off of a Lionel ZW. I haven't used my ZW-L yet but the question remains how is he able to remove trains and put other trains on the same track without sparking or shorting out the track, and he didn't cut the power on this line while doing it. I know many of you have the answer to the question ready to go, Y'all talk, I listen. Thanks - MARSHELANGELO
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