Running Bear's November 2025 Coffee Shop

[Boris]

Good morning. Sunny, 46° , very windy. November, eh?

Right Hip is tormenting me...X-Rays scheduled for next Monday. Arthritis sucks.

I did get to assemble one of my recent gifts. An accurail kit. 40' combination door box, (Lumber).

Have another to do, a covered hopper in salt service.

Capitals play tonight, LA Kings come to DC. Tonight's Football Cowboys @ Raiders. 8:15 on ABC and ESPN. Nice to see MNF bacl on over the air TV.

 

[NorthBrit]

Good evening all. Cottage Pie is in the oven. A simple affair.
Snow is forecast. It is cold enough to do so.

P&O ship 'Arcadia' leaving the Port of Tyne

 

[Bruette]

Should have been easy,

The story of my life more often than not. I'm glad you got it done.

Game was OK

Complex games are like that, next time will be better.

I wasnt quite ready for on 4 new tires, but what the heck. They were worn to the wear bars and noisy as mud tires.

I call it a win, win! New tires and you didn't have to change any of them. Bonus: now you are ready for the snow.

I recently paid $40 to have a tire repaired, $20 for the repair and $20 for the tip. Best of all I didn't have to put the tire back on the car. Nothing is cheap anymore and the older I get the less I want to do.

Right Hip is tormenting me.

Keep it warm. I do fine when I'm working, if I get cold sitting still, I pay for it.

Arthritis sucks.

I'll second that!

I did get to assemble one of my recent gifts. An accurail kit. 40' combination door box

That is a beauty, I love the Great Northern Goat!

 

[westtexjohn]

Good day all...

Might work on lawn mower today.....maybe. It is a nice day.

Don't know if this is best place to post this but I am in need of two, Walthers Code 83 Crossings - 90 Degrees -#948-833.
I can do PayPal or personal check. Please send me a PM if you have a couple of extras. I'll take one if you have it.

Gotta go....supposed to rain Wednesday and I have some outside things to do.

Thanks to those who commented on my previous post. Lots of good folks on this forum.

Everyone have a great day...........John

 

[bnsf971]

Good day all...

Might work on lawn mower today.....maybe. It is a nice day.

Don't know if this is best place to post this but I am in need of two, Walthers Code 83 Crossings - 90 Degrees -#948-833.
I can do PayPal or personal check. Please send me a PM if you have a couple of extras. I'll take one if you have it.

Gotta go....supposed to rain Wednesday and I have some outside things to do.

Thanks to those who commented on my previous post. Lots of good folks on this forum.

Everyone have a great day...........John

You can also post in the "wanted to buy" section of the forum, in case somebody has them that doesn't come to the coffee shop.

 

[chadbag]

Kind of strange day weatherize. Yesterday the forecast was cloudy with chance of storms for today. And in fact starting yesterday that was the forecast for the next 10 days, except two days later this week with a reprieve of no chance of storms.

Yesterday it did in fact rain after around 1:30pm off and on pretty hard all day and into the night.

This morning I woke up and the sun was shining through the bathroom window. It was 48F (which is 10 degrees less than its ben) though you could see scattered clouds. A few hours later it was 76% overcast with lots of gray clouds, and just a few patches of blue here and there. Now another 2 hours later it's blue with patches of clouds. Still big matches but a heck of a lot more blue now. Its 51F so not much change.

Ot still shows 30% chance of rain today but the hourly forecast has 0% all day for every hour. Go figure. And the 10 day forecast only has 1 day this week forecasted with 30% chance -- Wednesday. The rest are partly cloudy until next Tuesday (in a week) where they show two possible days of rain at 50% and 40%. Of course, yesterday the whole week except two days showed rain and storms and possible snow or ice one day. Expected high temps have gone up over night for the next 10 days as well by a few degrees...

Oh well.

 

[PNKFLOYD]

When you were a child, you thought of nap time as a punishment. Now it feels like a mini-vacation.
Vacation time for me!

 

[Kusojiji]

I have a problem and hope someone who is DCC inclined may clarify: I bought a Scaletrains GP30 and installed the recommended decoder. I figured out how to set it up and get the functions going, or at least the ones that I read about in the brochure, and I want to make sure I didn't miss anything. I emailed Scaletrains if they could provide me the AUX port assignments, ie: AUX1 number board lights; AUX4 MARS light front; etc. The response I get back is that what I'm asking for is in the weeds and is something that I should ask ESU. My response back was that since they built the electrical board, they should know what they connected to it. They sent me the electrical board diagram but it does not include any info on what is connected.

Is what I am asking for clear and reasonable to the manufacturer? Am I using the wrong terminology? Am I expecting too much?

 

[RhB Michael]

You can download the Lokprogrammer software free of charge from ESU.

Once you have done that, you will need to know which sound project was loaded to the decoder. Once you know the number of that project, you can download it to your computer and open it with the Lokprogrammer software to see how they have programmed the decoder and how they assigned AUXs.

 

[santafewillie]

Is what I am asking for clear and reasonable to the manufacturer? Am I using the wrong terminology? Am I expecting too much?

I don't do DCC, so I don't know if what you are asking is clear and reasonable. Wrong terminology, maybe. Why didn't you just purchase one with the decoder already installed?
I have always found ScaleTrains to have very exceptionable customer service.

 

[chadbag]

I have a problem and hope someone who is DCC inclined may clarify: I bought a Scaletrains GP30 and installed the recommended decoder. I figured out how to set it up and get the functions going, or at least the ones that I read about in the brochure, and I want to make sure I didn't miss anything. I emailed Scaletrains if they could provide me the AUX port assignments, ie: AUX1 number board lights; AUX4 MARS light front; etc. The response I get back is that what I'm asking for is in the weeds and is something that I should ask ESU. My response back was that since they built the electrical board, they should know what they connected to it. They sent me the electrical board diagram but it does not include any info on what is connected.

Is what I am asking for clear and reasonable to the manufacturer? Am I using the wrong terminology? Am I expecting too much?

Who loaded the sound project on your decoder? They're probably the ones who you should be asking about assignments. I don't do a. lot of sounds but the sound is all on the decoder. The locomotive has nothing to do with it. Did Scaletrains provide the sound project?

 

[migalyto]

You can download the Lokprogrammer software free of charge from ESU.

Do you need an actual Lok programmer to do this or is it done with a laptop?

 

[Marlin39]

The N scale UniTrack set arrived today. Took about 15 minutes to get it up and running.

I now have some mindless entertainment. That little dual mode BLI engine runs and sounds great in DC mode too!

I'm going to try some removable glue dots under the track so I can store the board on its side.

 

[shortwrench]

Shortwrench - Really nice photos. HO scale if I remember correctly?

Thanks. Yes, the layout is HO.

When I started out in photography, a friend taught me the basics and encouraged
me to start out with black and white. His reasoning: there are so many aspects in
color photography which can make for a decent color photo. In B&W, all you have
is black, white, and shades of grey. I used to buy 100 ft rolls of B&W film and load
my own 35mm cassettes. Took tons of pictures and processed the negatives in my
parents basement.

 

[migalyto]

 

[Marlin39]

 

[RhB Michael]

Do you need an actual Lok programmer to do this or is it done with a laptop?

You do not need the Lokprogrammer to download the software and look at the sound project. Without the Lokprogrammer though, you will not be able to read the information on the decoder. But, by downloading the sound project that was loaded to the decoder, you can examine the programming.

You can also use it to make changes to the programming manually by noting the CVs used for various functions. You will have to use whatever controller you are currently using to manually change or alter CVs like others do without a Lokprogrammer.

What you really need to find out at this point, is what sound project was loaded to the decoder. Or just buy the Lokprogrammer.

 

[migalyto]

You do not need the Lokprogrammer to download the software and look at the sound project. Without the Lokprogrammer though, you will not be able to read the information on the decoder. But, by downloading the sound project that was loaded to the decoder, you can examine the programming.

You can also use it to make changes to the programming manually by noting the CVs used for various functions. You will have to use whatever controller you are currently using to manually change or alter CVs like others do without a Lokprogrammer.

What you really need to find out at this point, is what sound project was loaded to the decoder. Or just by the Lokprogrammer.

Ok, thanks for the explanation. Makes much more sense now.

 

[Kusojiji]

I don't run sound, so I bought the DCC ready version and installed the decoder. Didn't want to pay the extra for the sound decoder.

Scaletrains does provide the configuration file for the GP30 to be used on the ESU decoder on their website and I downloaded it, used the ESU program to take a look at it and exported a CV list file that JMRI could use. I imported it, wrote it to the ESU decoder and everything seems to work. What I wanted to do was get the red classification light to come on when I go to shunting mode. From what I saw in the configuration file, AUX10 is where the red lamps are connected, but when I tied AUX10 to F3 (shunting), nothing happened and F5, which cycles the classification lights between white, blue and red, no longer had control of the red.

I explained what I was trying to do to Scaletrains, but that went down a different path for some reason.

From my understanding, AUX port is the term used to identify a wire or solder pad on a decoder. That AUX port is then assigned to a function and can be turned on/off manually or automatically in conjunction with something else. I have a headache...

Thanks for the responses and sorry for getting back late. Am rearranging the room to fit the track layout.

 

[Kusojiji]

View attachment 248205

When I watch some of the history programs and they start saying that we can't do that today with modern tools, I think to myself that it's because we have advanced beyond that capability. Back then, they chiseled 2 ton blocks out of a quarry by hand, built a rampart out of sand, cut some trees down and made a slide, and then pulled that 2 ton block hundreds of yards to a boat, loaded it onto the boat and transported it across a river, off loaded it from the boat, made more slides out of wood that they had to cut, dragged that 2 ton block hundreds of yards and did something with that 2 ton block. Oh, and forgot to add that they made that boat by hand as well.

Edited to take some of my harshness out. Was a late one last night.