The new track is in.  Not without issues though.

          We installed two new long switches on the main line in Summerland just to insure our public display ran flawlessly.  Track was realigned right next to the glass to give us better track curvature at the top of the hill and make room for a station that is located for better viewing and operation.  After all that we decided why use the old turnouts at all and replaced the second pair as well.  Good!

          I was a bit concerned about placing that long curved switch at the top of a hill but it was a needless fear.  It works beautifully and finally gives us a real working passing siding in Summerland.

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        The relocation of the sawmill is something again.

        The goal here was to finally (after about 12 years) make the nice little sawmill a functioning part of the railway rather than a just a bit of scenery.  Hmmm.  Not easy

        I removed the whole thing and started refurbishing the buildings and then laid out a plan for a nice passing siding just outside the mill along with a short, four car, spur.  Raw logs trucked in at the back – finished product out the front – by rail.  

        Seems the existing track didn’t facilitate a nice easy curve into a siding let alone a spur right tight against the siding.  I wasn’t prepared to remove another large and complex area of scenery to change that so the siding that was finished is oddly spaced.  I can make something of that.  The spur is weird as well.  It will be ok in the end.  Sadly, sometimes you don’t get what you wish for. 

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         While the track was being rerouted and put down I was busy rewiring some control panels.  Track is a one-man job anyway,

         All of the toggle switches that operate the two reversing tracks were located inside the horseshoe that is the main portion of the layout.  They were built in at a different time and for a very different track plan.  They were not accessible either from the dispatcher’s location or by train crews at Beaverdell or Carmi.

        I proposed that we just move them but there were problems with that too because for a very great part of the day/week/month this is a one-man operation for the public and the toggle switches were handy where they were. 

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        My job was to create a parallel set of seven toggle switches in the dispatcher’s area and keep the old ones in place.  Plus they had to be hidden so the public wouldn’t be tempted to “see what these do”.

        It took about a week of building a long harness, numbering each wire and hooking them up in inaccessible places but it all worked.  First time.  Yeah!

       The new panel as seen by the train crews….

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       The new panel as seen by the public…. 

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