Re: SAMRA and New Ideas

For track 4, you could use the switch terminals to power a relay that would turn off the power to track 4 in the vicinity of the module. You would need to modify and always use the same modules on each side of the sidings, the corners and the siding modules. the wire to track would have to be disconnected from the harness, fibre pins would be needed for the isolation, and the power run through the relay and back to the corners. I think an additional wire(s) would have to cross from one module to the others. I think it works well to talk to each other. If some one wants to pursue this, put together a plan.

Now for the lift bridge, if you wanted, one could make is a vertical lift bridge with towers on both ends.

Since all trains would likely have to stop for the bridge opening we could use the halt button. Playing with the power in a specific reach of the layout seems like a lot of trouble and could interrupt our loop. what are the other ideas out there?

We could make sky boards 46" long as a standard giving every joint a 2" gap. This would disrupt the continuity of the scene but let us see the trains some.

On Sat, 9 Feb 2002 01:36:59 EST Sbdolifka@aol.com writes:

The Houston club has a 3 track / 3 bridge wooden thru truss bridge that is hinged and lifts up. It line up very easily with the track because they cut the bottom of the rail and spread out the tube in order to layover the pins of the track on the opening side module.

Steve, don't we have a link to them on our website? I know that they don't have a reciprocal link to us. If you contact them about the link maybe you could ask them about the design specs of their bridge.

Would it be feasible to have something that would make the trains stop if the bridge is open and also on track four when trains are pulling in and / or out of track three's sidings? Basically interlocking in miniature.

We had a good time at the Samra show, albeit our cattle cars taking a dive from picking the diamonds. The club as a whole really out did ourselves on the variety of trains we ran. The only complaint we really have is that when you put skyboards up all the way around it is really hard to see the trains from the inside where most of us tend to be and makes train wrecks more possible. Maybe leaving one or two out on each side, depending on the size of the layout would help. We were also glad to see that we were not setup against a wall.

We did some train chasing on the way home on Sunday and discovered a way to the MK Cibilo Creek bridge. It is a very interesting and photogenic bridge. We saw several trains including the northbound Texas Eagle, unfortunately we didn't have a camera. Maybe next time.

Rick & Ricky