It's been a while since my last update. The holidays are a busy time for me. Especially this year. Covid has everyone bungled up so we're excessively busy at work. I also drive a tractor for some friends at their Christmas tree farm on the weekends. Somehow, I've been trucking along:
- The floor under the layout has been covered with ergonomic mats from everybody's favorite bargain hardware store so now table building can begin
- Research turned up that the Mahoning valley had something called block coal and it was mined from the ground and put right into the blast furnaces. I'm skipping a coke plant now.
- Research also taught me that there was a thing called merchant iron furnaces. These furnaces only made pig iron and that was sold puddling furnaces, then open hearths, and eventually bessemer converters. The last merchant iron furnace in the Mahoning valley shut down in the 1960s (which is pretty mind blowing).
- The above research made me scrap the original track plan and try something new where the furnaces are not necessarily right next to the open hearth and teeming, etc. That's still in process.
- I'm testing the unloader for the hoppers. I plan to post pictures of that as soon as I get the grade built to push the hoppers up to test it. Hopefully I can learn to program Arduino to motorize it.
- The blast furnace model is coming along. I plan to post pictures this week after I get a few more pieces printed and glued on. I had to shrink it and that's a bummer but it is what it is. Technically, it's still accurate if it becomes a merchant iron furnace because those were typically smaller.
I dismantled the Fastrack loop on the test layout and started putting the Atlas track down to see how I like it in terms of assembly, reliability, noise, etc. It is silent compared to the Fastrack, that's for sure. I haven't ran full speed just yet because I haven't got enough pieces to make a full loop but I expect them to be in this week.
I picked up some real deals online on conventional used locomotives. I would like to start converting them to TMCC/Protosound. I gotta be honest though, I'm chicken to start getting into all that. I've learned a great deal about electronics here and at work but it's been troubleshooting; not exactly installing. So we'll see. I'm looking for thoughts on upgrading conventional Lionel steamers to protosound or TMCC. I got two 0-6-0s and an 0-8-0 with railsounds that need upgrading.
Anyways, that's the news. Hopefully getting the table built will result in more steady progress. We'll see what goes.
