There’s been a multiplication of small-to-medium tasks recently, so it’s worth making an inventory of what needs to be done on the layout. These are more or less in the order I plan to address them.

As usual tasks fall into two categories depending on their “impact”, meaning how visible a task is. “High impact” tasks have the most impact on the layout as a museum exhibit, from a public/visitor point of view -- these can be either scenery improvement, automation improvement, or anything that enhances running for the Saturday Operators and public view.

I reinstalled the tablet displays on the layout, preparing for an eventual reopening of the museum:

Allen got a “Cracker Jack” illuminated HO-sized billboard, so we’re trying it out to see where it would look nice on the layout; here’s Allen first idea and it seems like a good option:

(Edit: And here’s an update on how I think these work and how I managed to ruin the electronics for that one by using the wrong voltage to power it, so now I’ve ordered a full replacement and I’m waiting for it; they also sell replacement controllers.)

I think we should power it from the building lighting circuits (see below). So I had to dig a bit into it. The building lights are controlled by a row of unlabelled toggles under the Valley panel:

Today we are working on the siding B91, located between turnouts T80 and T90. It has been unused for quite a while. Turnouts T80 and T90 still work fine. After carefully scrubbing the track on the siding to clean it, it worked fairly well.

A steam train enters the siding at T90.

On the other side at T80, we have 3 electromagnet uncouplers:

Description of Issue

Today we’re fixing a dead spot that appeared out of the blue on the mainline, in the middle of block B320, right were engine 1201 is on this picture:

Initial inspection shows there’s nothing interesting there. It’s the middle of the block. Closer inspection gives a different story; one may even say this spot had a story to tell:

Description of Issue

T320 is a crossover that brings trains from block B321 to B320 in our normal running direction.

We’ve been experiencing some engines shorting on turnout T320 “again”. And interestingly, some engines would go past that turnout with no problem, and some would stop and short on the turnout.

A pair of SP SD40s arrive at T320.

It’s worth noting that this turnout is currently spiked. The tortoise is currently missing the spring wire, and there’s a short in the toggle button at the panel; because it offers little valuable operational benefit to us, I had thus disconnected it and spiked it for now.

Once I learned Jim was having issues there, my first reaction was to try different trains to replicate the problem and identify some kind of pattern. Our track cleaning engine EMDX 1201 has no trouble going over it, nor do the automated trains. Maybe it’s a load issue… I tried to replicate the issue using two UP SD70s there with a long train, and could not replicate the problem. However once, just once, I got the 1201 engine to do a short stop-and-go hesitation there. Yet, very interestingly, the issue has been consistently reproducible with these SP SD40s, and I finally got to be on the spot to see the problem in action. I was eager to be able to reproduce it… not only is this turnout really hard to reach making it nearly impossible to get the train out of it, it is also a very important part of the automation so I need trains to run flawlessly over it.

After trying some variations, I found these SP units work fine alone, yet they short when “under load”. And when shorted, here’s an interesting detail:

I started a project list one year ago and it’s time to look at what has been accomplished, and what’s left to do. Note that this is basically a snapshot of the same task list which is available in the layout presentation document here.

There are two new tasks added in this list. It’s satisfying to be able to mark six tasks as being fully done, and some serious progress has been done on six other tasks.

For contrast, back in 2019, I managed to accomplish zero tasks, as the whole year was all about maintenance to keep the automation and the operators running. Of course 2020 was different since there was no such running.

A very important difference is that I was able to allocate almost two solid weeks at the end of December to work on projects -- which I had been unable to do the year before since the museum was open and automation had to be running at all times.

Today’s visit on the layout was mostly fixing some little overdue things.
To get started, I dusted all the yard panels. This has to be done very carefully to not damage the delicate inscriptions -- some of these decals are quite old and unglue very easily.

I rearranged the lights on the side of the mountain to remove dark spots; it is now somewhat properly illuminated:

Back in 2015 I spent quite some time “reviving” the Fairfield Industrial Yard [*], cleaning the tracks, identifying which turnouts still worked or not. And yesterday we had our cleaning engine 1201 attempting to clean the Fairfield tracks again!

So far I cleaned a few feet on two tracks only. Progress is slow as this has not been cleaned for a while and there’s a lot of track in “pavement” that is hard to clean -- neither the rollers nor the pad car can get to it easily. So it will take a while, and that’s fine.

The goal is to have some simple automation on this -- basic shuttle back-and-forth running. No turnout automation at first.

[*] Speaking of names, which one is proper? Fairfield Industrial Yard or Fairfield Industrial Park?

The NCE EB1 circuit breakers for Fairfield and Stockton Station are now installed:

DCC is now provided to the Stockton Station using a dedicated power district on the “West” terminal:

The Mountain Turnout Panel has this little mysterious “Front Yard” toggle at the bottom, and for a long while I could not understand what it was connected to nor what is purpose was:

Now I understand that flipping it right or left connect its output to the Mountain 1 or Mountain 2 panels power: