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I'm sure that's not right - as Triplex says, the car is arched to take the load. The truss rods have turnbuckles on them, and can be tightened to put an arch into the wood body of the car and prevent the car from sagging. Most photos I've seen of wood cars in good condition show a slight arch to...

Our next official open house will be in October, after Thanksgiving. We're not really doing anything on the Little Current subdivision section right now, we're concentrating our efforts on the Cartier subdivision mainline heading out in either direction from Sudbury, and we should have some more...

Not quite. The FP7 is 4 feet longer to accomodate a larger water tank for the steam generator. An F7 can very well be equipped with a steam generator, but it's still an F7. Same goes for FP9 vs. F9. And there's no such thing as an FP7B or FP9B. Just F7B and F9B units.

Any diesel engine can run in either direction, but the controls will be set up to prefer one direction. Although some railroads had dual controls in some engines to make it easier to operate in either direction. Typically the short end is the front, but some railroads with high short hoods...

If you mean the dock and silos on the lake at Moorey, yes. (it's Canada Cement in the 1970s).

Kinda. An interlocking tower controls an interlocking, and that interlocking could really be all kinds of things. But there's absolutely no reason ever that you would want to interlock or otherwise control switches inside a yard from a central tower. Yard switches are always manual. Switch...

The wye at McKerrow is the start of the Little Current subdivision, and we will take it to Little Current/Turner. Right now it's just a temporary yard across the aisle from McKerrow, with a runaround track and a track for each location: Espanola, Lawson Quarry + Birch Island, Little Current +...

Chad, That part is actually some of the older construction on the current layout. Years ago, the club had a smaller layout in part of a warehouse somewhere in Kitchener (Boehmer Box factory). Eventually they were forced to move and settled in our present location. As I understand it, the only...

Larry, quite true. What I meant was, some larger (flat) yards have elevated towers for the yard office where the yard master & car control clerks etc. can see the yard from the office. In this case yard tower = yard office I wasn't referring to any interlocking towers that might control...

A friend of mine had some video he took of a shortline doing a "flying runaround" - there wasn't a free double ended track they could use, so they parked a car, set the handbrake, uncoupled and put the engine in a spur. Close the switch, guy on the car releases the brake and gravity takes over...

Keep in mind that any engine can run in any direction, regardless of what is actually the front end. I've seen several examples of modern diesel power running long hood forward when that's the rear of the engine. In most cases it was the only power on the train, so they probably couldn't, or...

We use the car cards and waybills system at my club, and it works really well. It's a very flexible system, and very realistic when you use it right. :) We use standard 4-cycle waybills. (Move 1: A to B. Move 2: B to C Move 3 etc.) One thing to keep in mind is you don't have to use all 4...

Big difference between yard towers and interlocking towers. Interlocking towers control, well, and interlocking. An interlocking being a section of track with all the switches and signals tied together to a signal control system. In the old days, manual interlockings would have been common...

Exactly, yard tracks don't have signals. Within a yard, or on any sidings or spur tracks that have manually thrown switches, you'll see the red (or yellow) and green targets on the switch stand that indicate which way the switch is thrown. On mainline signalled trackage you don't have this, but...

There's a half set of stairs on the south side, at the back of aisle where the staging yard is, which doesn't really go anywhere yet, but we've started putting in the joists for the floor of the middle level walkway it goes to. Another half set will go from there to the second floor at the back...

I don't know what makes you say that, there's definately no piece of track or layout that's been removed or taken out of service, so that part of your comment is wrong. A lot of work has been done over the past year; some of it hidden, some of it fairly visible. We've completely rewired all...

The last time I actually rode the Canyon train in 2000, we crossed the Montreal River bridge in heavy fog. You could barely see the bottom, and you couldn't see the end of the train. It was kinda neat actually. Everything just faded off into the fog.

Unfortunately you won't see any engines in AC paint anymore. The AC was absorbed by the Wisconsin Central in 1995, and all their engines became WC engines. Now CN owns the WC and by extension the AC. I was up in 2004 and mostly saw CN engines (including a GMD1 doing yard duties). A WC SD45 made...