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Friday, April 18, 2025

AM08 & AM86

 

Just a quick video while I was running trains ...



 

Ballasting, ballasting, and ballasting ...

Following on my spring cleaning and some ballast issues, I decided to fix those as well as finishing up on ballasting around the double-slip switch D2. As of now, all painted tracks have been ballasted!


Ok, I still need to finishing the center of the double slip ....

Thursday, April 17, 2025

Adding new engines to the ECoS Command Station

 

Since I didn't have the ECoS by the test bench when I added new engines during the winter, I had to now add them to the ECoS; with two challenges:

  • Adding the picture for each engine
  • Manually configuring all functions for the Roco engines with Zimo decoders. I don't understand why Zimo doesn't support Railcom ...
 
 





















 

 

In a previous post, I mentioned that one of my BB 16000 from REE was unresponsive on the test bench. I tried putting it on the layout and it immediately shorted and I heard something popping and a bad smell.

Here's a picture from the previous post:


And here where it popped:


And it left traces of smoke on the connectors to the pantographs ...



Interestingly enough, without the body on, the engine worked okay including lights and sound. Go figure ...





Wednesday, April 16, 2025

ČD 359 Západní expres

 

Here's my ČD 359 Západní expres running from München to Praha in 2019. 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cosmostrainadventures/40558916783/

Here's the original on vagonweb.cz.


In HO scale, it is as follow:


Description Image Reference In stock
ČD 362
MTB HOCD362-040
ČD Bdmpee
ACME 55293
ČD Bdmpee
ACME 55293
DLB ABbmdz
ACME 55199
DLB Bmz
ACME 55199



And here's the video:



Monday, April 14, 2025

Spring cleaning

 

Pretty much like every year, I did a nice clean-up of the layout, the tracks, and the train room. I cleaned the tracks with the rubber and ran the Roco cleaner afterwards.



You can clearly see the difference: clean on the right and not so clean on the left with cat hair ...



While cleaning the tracks, I have to be careful not damaging the ballast. Unrelated, but it just so happens that some of the ballast didn't hold well to the vacuum. I'm not sure if it wasn't glued properly or if it got damaged through the winter because of temperature differences and UV light  ...





But, at least, trains are running again!!