Part 26 - HOn3 K-27 Tests Delta yard after intense track painting & rail cleaning

Burr Stewart describes the purpose of each track in his HO/HOn3 Everett-Delta model yard while a Blackstone D&RGW K-27 and some stock cars see if the rails are clean enough after recent spray painting coated the railheads. He also describes using a Dremel moto-tool with a wire brush to clean the frogs and points of his Shinohara dual-gauge turnouts. At the very end, a new BLI SP&S steam locomotive makes a cameo appearance on "the low-line."
The HO scale model railroad containing Delta Yard is Burr Stewart's "Burrlington Northern" model railroad layout, featured in many other videos on this KZbin channel @Burr Stewart , as well as his blog burrlingtonnor.... The train layout is set in the Seattle region in 1973, three years after the 1970 corporate merger that created the Burlington Northern (BN) Railroad out of the Great Northern (GN), Northern Pacific (NP), Burlington Route (CB&Q) and the Spokane, Portland and Seattle (SP&S) railroads. Playing smaller roles on the layout are the narrow gage D&RGW "west coast extension" featured in this video, the Milwaukee Road (MILW)'s western extension and the Union Pacific (UP). He took the video with an Akaso action cam set to 4Kx30fps resolution, and edited it in iMovie and Photoshop on a MacBook Pro.

[@ericbarabuscio1707]

Hi Just getting back into trains after 35 years, I've been enjoying this Chanel and learning a lot..

[@muchfunwithtrains]

Glad to help you get back into it! :)

[@dacuzzz]

hi Burr... i didn't know you run dual gauge ... that little steamer was doing great... nice job on cleaning the track.. thx 4 sharing .. vinny

[@muchfunwithtrains]

Glad you enjoyed it Vinny. Almost as good as N scale, right? :)

[@NewHavenRails]

As always, great video!

[@muchfunwithtrains]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@berserk5735]

Incredible

[@muchfunwithtrains]

Glad you liked it. I almost didn't publish this because it was a "maintenance" operation, but people seem to be enjoying it anyway.

[@dtj9923]

Hey Burr, Have you done anything special with your Shinohara dual gauge turnouts for DCC operation? I am planning a DCC layout with a dual gauge interchange at either end and I have heard the the Shinohara turnouts can cause DCC issues but i have not yet tested these rumors. The Shinohara stuff is getting scarce! I keep snapping up any of their dual gauge turnouts and transition tracks that I find. Frustrating that it is now out of production.

[@muchfunwithtrains]

I agree it is frustrating that these turnouts are hard to find now. The tooling is out there somewhere... There are two things I recommend doing to prepare these turnouts for DCC operation. One is to connect the main frog complex to a "frog juicer" circuit so you don't have to worry about the points making good contact with the outside rails. The other is to carefully solder some very fine wire (I used 28 gauge) to the underside of the points and solder it to the adjacent rails, so you are not dependent on the rail joiners for this connection. I have only done this on one of my dual gauge turnouts (the one I installed recently near the stock pen area) and the others seem to be working ok, but if I was starting over (and the patience to do it) I would take this precaution. All that said, study each turnout very carefully to make sure you're clear which rail is part of the "main frog complex" and which rail needs to be isolated from it, because of the complexity of these frog areas. One the one I did recently, it took me longer to study and figure this out than it did to install the feeder wires and connect the frog complex to a frog juicer. Let me know if you end up with any extra turnouts! I might be able to use them! :)

[@dtj9923]

@@muchfunwithtrains Extra turnouts... hmmmm. I'll have see what's left after I get my layout spiked down. I'm still in the hoarding phase. Thanks for the info on how you set these up. I remember Malcom Furlow talking about setting up single gauge Hon3 Shinohara turnouts back in the 80's in his SanJuan Central book, similar to what you described. I generally use ME Hon3 turnouts which work great with DCC but there is no dual gauge solution there. With the dual gauge Shinohara switches and all the extra frogs I was wondering if they caused any DCC resets due to micro shorts. From the video you posted I would say it's not an issue if I follow your suggestions. I do use large capacitor banks on all my engines for reliability, that seems to help a lot. Any shorting can still cause issues particularly with Soundtraxx electronics. Hopefully somebody picks up Shinohara again, I have a need for some of their Hon30 products as well. PECO and the other options we currently have for 009/Hon30 look like toy store trainset track. Code 80 Hon30 track with O scale width ties! Seriously PECO. Looks great for On18 mine equipment though! Thanks again for the info!

[@muchfunwithtrains]

I haven't had any DCC issues with micro shorts on the Shinohara dual gauge turnouts, but I also haven't gotten around to putting decoders in any of my brass steamers yet - I'm just running the Blackstone products so far. One of these years I'll get around to that, and report back...