The week before Easter is usually slower going and with John beeing eager to test the Zimo sound decoder he had built into the Atlantic we decided that it would be time for having some fun again and called a work&fun session - which meant that we tested the Hiawatha with sound first and than did some work.
I got John interested in Milwaukee Road modelling and he bought himself a Hiawatha set from FVM. He got it earlier than me, but I wasn't jealous. (Well, maybe a bit!) He promised to tailor the sounds for the Zimo decoder he prefers due to his contacts to Zimo. And he went a long way to get it as accurate as possible, he bought a few DVDs to get an idea how the Atlantic sounded and he downloaded airhorn sounds from a website to get everything right. He kept his promise and had it ready in time for our session.
And I must say - it was amazing! I could watch the loco for hours going through the yard and around the layout. The photos of that event are on the Flickr photostream!
We will do a video session someday to get a really good impression of this awesome train, which is a real piece of art with it's design and the amazing details. Fox Valley Models did a really good job on that one and I sure hope that it is a commercial success for them, encouraging more projects of this kind. To be honest, it helps that there are just 3 different models in this train: The observation, the cafe and the rest - the coaches are of the same design as is the parlor car.
We had to find out how the Atlantic would perform over the 3% grade up from Adair to East Portal - with 6 cars. This small 4-4-2 managed to get them over the pass without stalling and slipping and it still had reserves. Of course the cars are a bit on the light side so this is not your really heavy freight train in need of 4 locos!
So, yes - it is able to get it's train up the mountain and therefore the next session will see a double-headed excursion train with double sound or two trains meeting somewhere!
Of course, we did some work, too. Wolfgang planted trees and the rest tried to organize the next session by loading cars, placing locos and shuffling cars around with the good old 0-5-0.
And we discussed the oncoming extension for which construction will start this summer.
I hope, everybody had some fun!
Avery Depot
It took very long to build, but now it is nearly ready - the depot!
