@Michael Cimba 040217 Thanks, it's been a great stress reliever!
Update, got some trains running on the Cincinnati side!
The grade on both sides is tracked and wired, and we've managed to test some longer passenger consists. I know there's hand-wringing on this board about steep grades, but I can tell you the way we have this ~4-5% setup works just fine. The Bantam Railking loco effortlessly pulls 6 lighted cars over the grade with energy to spare. Gets a little dicey on the downhill side...need to be ready to throttle down quick! And Dad's postwar 736 managed to pull 7 PW and (lightweight) MPC cars up and down, although it worked a bit harder and we did get a bit of wheel slip a couple times.
Also had one of our first accidents. Dad is getting used to the KW and its odd handle setup and powering two separate lines. Had an accidental uncoupling of the passenger cars from the tender and instead of throttling back or toggling off the power district, dad threw it full open with almost catastrophic results and certain carnage. Fortunately, he flipped it around just in time and the cars derailed but thankfully remained coupled. Although there were probably injuries on board. (Photo attached!)
While dad did some troubleshooting on 022 switches, I built the panel that will hold the toggles and LEDs for the turnout indicators. I put together and tested the cheap little toggle switches with the LEDs that @MED and a couple other folks helped out with on this thread. Super simple and worked like a champ!
Learning the controls...
...but not learning quickly enough!
I hope everyone is OK!
And a look at the complete riser / trestle For the grade on the near side, we modified the standard Lionel trestle set for closer spacing and with variable height ledgers and footings that we cut from leftover wood. Turned out nicer than I thought it would. There will eventually be a truss bridge over the crossover.
