Label: What's taking so long?

Good question. What is taking so long? Your omscaler has been waiting/working weeks on a reworked 0-6-0 shifter (switcher). To remind readers, it was severely damaged due to a back fitting of track retainers. So, Microlotive©, where is the beef (old Wendy's Hamburger tag line)? Well, as it turns out, a large real life locomotive has around ten thousand moving parts. Yep, that many. And, Microlotive© is insisting on doing a first class job. The last shifter was a “quick and dirty” project. So, again, patience is called for. Hopefully the results will be worth it. Keeping you posted, omscaler

Label: The Towns Along the Way

The current dilemma: where to put the railroad? I don't mean I don't know whether to put the railroad in one room or another. I mean, where should the model railroad be situated as far as depicting a location. As many of you know, I model the GM&O during the late forties. The current idea is to put a “staging” yard at a farther point on the model railroad. This area will represent both a large northern destination as well as a southern destination. In model railroad usage, this area will be used to build respective southbound and northbound trains. Many modelers use this technique. It gives a lot of planning flexibility with regard to making up trains. But the real question now is what actual locations to use on the modeled portion of said layout. I currently have diagrams for the Union City Tennessee freight house, which has been built, and the union station. I also have a diagram for the Humboldt Tennessee freight house. Right now my thinking is to build Union City on the layout. Have Humboldt as well. And, lastly, I am considering Murphysboro, Illinois. I have pictures of the passenger station here as well as a track diagram showing the location of shops, roundhouse, freight house and other buildings. Looks like things are shaping up. (Aren't you glad I didn't say on track?) omscaler

Label: Solving a “sticky” problem

More progress. The previously mentioned boxcar gaggle (group) got done. However, your developer noticed a profound friction of motion in the group as a whole. Well, omscaler got busy with another supplemental idea and wouldn't you know it, most friction went away. Fortunately, this modification was a simple one. Results were somewhat impressive. Boxcars are in rework mode and getting back on track (sorry again for the pun). Moving forward again, omscaler

Label: Progress at last!

As you readers know, last post indicated that the project underway had hit a bit of a rough patch, to borrow from the British. Well, whew! Things are now moving along according to plan. This writer was able to fabricate a couple of work holders. One of which increased the rate of production enough for us to move forward at a better speed with a test batch of production boxcars. We should have a group of ten or more by the time this post is published. And another thing. When I was at a previous company, I and others noticed that the prototype developed was often a good bit more shall we say higher quality than the production run. Oh, well, art (or is it craft) imitates life. Until next post, a chipper omscaler

Label: A passel of boxcars      

As many of you know, omscaler has been very forthcoming about development efforts of The Omega Scale Railway. So it is in the vein that I am sharing the current state of affairs. At this point I am working on construction of one dozen boxcars. Things are not going smoothly. If any of our readers have worked in manufacturing prototyping, they will recognize this as normal. The reason is this. When you go from prototyping to production, the product produced is never like the prototype. No matter how hard you try, production is always below the prototype. In this case, new material and method had to be incorporated in the product. On the positive side, things are beginning to work and we are moving forward. When this phase is finished, production standards will be in place to facilitate the construction of any type of rolling stock needed. Looking to the future, omscaler

Label: A little more inspiration:

To continue our anniversary celebration, another oldie but goodie:

This a glimpse of the early challenges we worked on.

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.