Kokomo Indiana model railroad club looking for new members


malletman

Alcohaulic
The club I belong to could use some more active members. We have a 15' by 60' layout based on the old Clinchfield Railroad. Layout is DC block controled with 5 mainline cabs and CTC dispatched. Takes 15 members to fully staff the layout. We operate with a car card system and actively interchange with our home layouts and each other. Unit coal trains are70's loaded with a working flood loader and unloaded with a working rotary dumper. We also have a 16' long triple track elevator to store trains "offline" for durations of time. Layout was built the old school way with truescale road bed and hand laid rail back in the early '70s. Below are some pictures of the layout, just wish the trees would have gotten further along. We meet most every Saturday evening from 7 till 11pm. Building is heated and has AC, dues are $15 per month and cover the gas and electric bills. Contact me for details.
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A bit too far for me, but I'd love to run trains on it, I assume it's HO? I see you've got some dual gauge track, what's the narrow gauge?
 
I live in Marion but, all my engines are DCC.

You could unlock the DC capability, I know there's a warning about the possibility of runaways if the decoder doesn't detect the difference instantly, but that's always seemed a bit illogical to me. A DC powered track usually has no voltage applied to it when placing locos on it, how can you have a runaway (the warning always seems to be about that danger). Far more likely to happen when placing a DC enabled decoder onto a DCC powered track (which is at full voltage). So, so long as you remember to re-lock the DC capability off before returning your locos to your DCC track, I can't see a problem.

This runaway effect happened to my first DCC loco when it was placed onto the DCC track at my other club for the first time, only for a short distance, can only be because the decoder was slow in detecting it.
 
That is pretty cool, just out of my reach though as I am about an hour and 20 mins from your location. rzw0wr is 29 miles away, so as tootnkumin said, rzw0wr could consider looking into the DCC to DC thing, or just get a DC engine? :)
 
There are several engines on the layout that have dual mode decoders in them. Sound sound decoders dont like running as there is a 3vt AC charge on the rails for the CTC block occupancy detection circuits. Doesnt seem to bother most other decoders other than you cant "kick" cars in the yard due to lag time when instantly switching from forwards to reverse while still moving at a switching speed. There are plenty of engines that stay at the club all the time that you really do not need your own equipment to run. I have more than enough engines in the main yard, although its more fun for me to run my own power there. The logging operation is where I normaly hang out and operate although I also usualy man the yard with the roundhouse. There is a secondary yard that I dont have pictures of. The dual gauge is for HOn3 engines as I was into logging with narrow gauge for awhile. The track work is rough and not friendly to rod engines like DRGW Mikados. C16's will tollerate it but it was built with geared power in mind such as Shays, Heislers and Climaxes. Mike
 
Hope you get your crew numbers up mate, that's too nice a layout to not have people enjoying it.
 
Hi malletman, is this club still around? I can't find much about it online. Thanks.
 



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