The coupler quandary, persistence paid off. To start with, I almost named this post “The Battle of The Coupler”. How melodramatic. Well at times to be honest it did seem like that. I finally realized that I had delayed a most crucial component. By leaving this part to the last, I was not able at that point to make any real progress on the development of the very small railroad, i.e., The Omega Scale Railway. The coupler became the sole effort some three or more months ago. I tried one idea then another. Nothing looked right or worked. Finally I got out a diagram for a railcar and enlarged it. I also found pictures and diagrams of the Janney coupler online and studied them. I continued working. At last, a working coupler emerged. It looks similar to the prototype coupler but releases with a bottom clip spring. More about the spring another time (unless I get inquiries). The coupler still definitely some fine tuning but looks realistic and will let the project go forward now. For a final detail, the coupler was installed Sunday, January 29^th, 2017, at approximately 3 P.M. Your ideas for improvement, questions as well as general comments will be welcome.

Blog entry 2/14/17

Some years ago this writer was accumulating a collection of various model railroad magazines. After that time I was reading an article in the August 1982 edition. The article told how a man wanted to entertain his two children on a long car trip to Florida. What the man did was to build a 1/384 scale railroad operated by air! The air was to be forced in by a funnel attached to a tube while the car was at speed. Later the man built a larger setup for the air railroad. The trains traveled in only one direction due to the configuration of air ports set in wood at a forty-five degree angle. One direction, one speed. Later on I saw an air-rail setup at a train show in Birmingham, Alabama.  Again, one direction, one speed. To be correct, the route could be “switched” to another route if the layout was so built. Again, sometime later I was reading the 1982 article while working as a night watchman at a local manufacturing plant. I had taken the job to give me time to return to school. Anyway, I began to think about improving the operation of the air-rail railway which the editor of the magazine containing the article had dubbed “Omega Scale”. First, I wanted to be able to reverse direction. At home, I built a small section of test track with a double split chamber. Each chamber had the air ports angled in opposite directions. I was able to get the little boxcar to move back and forth by blowing air into separate tubes. I realized that this method was going to be cumbersome to build; could not be made to vary the train speed and the equipment did not look exactly realistic. I began to think about ways to solve these problems and this effort became “The Chronicles of The Very Small Railroad” also known as The Omega Scale Railway©. Please join me as I recount the story of how I was able to solve numerous challenges and produce a working 1/384 scale model railroad.