The LION made another video, this time the camera is on the Downtown Express train.
This train originates in the Bronx, The LENOX TOWER passes it off to the Broadway Tower, and so the tour begins. Once the tran passes the Chambers Street Station, NEVINS TOWER takes it the rest of the way into Brooklyn, But Wait…
Through the majyck of HO railroading, and a poetic license the train flies across the Brooklyn Skyline (shown only here as a blue tunnel wall but to be decorated with the sky line as pare of the view space of the Smith-9th Street Station above and to the left) and returns to LENOX AVENUE for another run at the BROADWAY LION
It was also fun to see the real lion directing traffic in the background every so often. This video had the added feature of other subway routes whizzing by – When scenery is completed, the action will have even more realism!
I think you have done an admirable job of achieving one of the things that I think most modelers want to have on their layouts. That is the ability to have several trains in action at once, especially when they are passing each other. Most of us will have to pay close attention to our trains to accomplish that without a cornfield meet or running a switch the wrong way. Your layout does it automatically, and I gather without the aid of a computer.
Correct. No computers on the railroad. I am a network administrator here at the Abbey, with 5 servers and 30 workstations, but no spare computer for the train room, and no clue on how to make an interface.
I call this “Analog Automation” The Layout IS the computer. Resistors slow the trains as the approach the station a gap stops them. I have a 1 rpm time clock which powers a different circuit every 15 seconds. I simply connect a gap-bridging relay to whatever circuit seems to be correct for that station, and the train move to the next station. The trains are a little fast: NYCT runs at 30 mph, these trains are doing 50 mph, but then when these cars were new, they did do 50 mph, so it is not all that bad.