California Southern Model Railroad Club

12140 E Firestone Blvd, Norwalk, CA 90650 (562)863-3156

DCC Progress Report

April 26, 2008

DCC conversion on the lower lever of the layout is about 90% complete! Areas that are wired up and operational include the entire mainline loop, Fenner Block, the Storage and Staging Yards, WIngfoot, Malabar, Malin Yard, 9th St., Hadley, and Spadra/Furniture factory. Areas in progress are Reyes, the Engine Facility, and Norwalk. The mainline crossover switches at 9th St. have been reconfigured and reinstalled, and are currently awaiting new switch machines.

Over the next few weeks the electrical committee will continue to wire up the remaining switching sections of the layout so that we will be back to 100% operation before the May Open House. Please be prepared for the possibility of a few minor glitches in the overall system while we continue to work out any bugs in the new Digitrax system. Thank you for your patience during this transition.

Below are a bunch of photos of our DCC crossover including three (top row) from recent DCC cut in sessions and eight from our "Big Cut" on Saturday, January 26th as over 50 pounds (1500+ ft.) of 5-10 year old copper wiring, cord and DC buss cables were removed from the layout.

One of our new Digitrax DCC Boosters with track buss & Loco-net cables attached.	Electrical Committee member Chester Barkoski working on new feeders for Malin.	Electrical Chairman Steve Kelly connecting mainline feeders on our new DCC buss.
Steve Kelly cutting the 10 year old MRC Control Master 20 layout power cables.	Steve assuming the position.	Chester pulling DC feeders at Hadley.
Death to the Toggles!	A view of the spaghetti central inside during the big cut.	90 minutes into the big cut, the pile of wreckage is growing!
In the beginning the pile was small.		3 1/2 hours later the old wiring is all out and ready to be recycled.

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