Peter,
If all you need is a programmer, and depending on what you can get for your DCC equipment on the used market, you could replace it with a device such as a SPROG. http://www.sprog.us.com/ http://www.sprog-dcc.co.uk/index.shtml Dave Heine Easton, PA From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Peter Vanvliet Sent: Saturday, September 14, 2013 12:39 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: {S-Scale List} FNF 9/13/13 Good to see this thread back! I hope more people will share their "S" efforts. This week I finished permanently installing the B.T.S. "Greeley's Place" kit (a.k.a. Smitty's Rod-n-Reel) on my layout. This involved connecting the two surface-mount LEDs that are in the structure to the layout's accessories bus. I then built up a bit of scenery around the whole building. I hope to add a nice, large tree in the next few months to provide Smitty with some shade during the hot Pennsylvania summer months... http://pmrr.org/Layouts/PMRRBranch/ProgressReports_LVL2_52.htm A couple of impromptu mini, one-man operating sessions this week were a welcome break from the computer... Last night I finished testing the free-rolling abilities of all my cars by swapping out wheels and/or trucks... whatever it took to get some nice rolling cars. I am happy now. Over the past several months I have been scratchbuilding a large industrial building (called the Canonsburg Milling company, which was a real company, but I have no prototype photos of it). I am down to building the last wall on the building. This one will be behind a "concrete" dock, and will feature a second-floor access door, accessed via one of the Kaw Valley Designs staircase kits. This week I decided to cast the concrete dock out of Plaster of Paris, and using some Lego blocks I had bought on eBay a while back as the mold master. It worked well (took three days to dry). I hope to finish installing this last wall section this weekend, and hopefully also install the roofs. Then it will be off to the paint shop. Final painting and detailing will probably take several more months. I have also been digging more into the battery-powered S-CAB system that I use. For example, I wanted to find out what it takes to program the non-basic CVs of the decoder. I had planned on selling my now surplus Digitrax DCC system, but it turns out that you need a DCC system to be able to program the non-basic CVs (use your own or borrow a friend's). I hope to experiment with this in the next month or so and report my findings on my web site. Our club, the Houston S Gaugers, were in a sad state about four months ago when it looked like we might only be doing one show a year from now on; and that is a one-day show to boot! My, how times change. We now have three shows lined up: October, November, and January! The one in January will be the World's Greatest Hobby show here in Houston, and we plan on bringing out every single module the club and individuals own. Several of our club members have been busy improving the looks of some of the modules. I plan on adding some scenery elements to some of our modules in the next few months as well. If you are in the Houston area during those months, check out the "Events" page of our web site: http://www.houstonsgaugers.org/ There is always something fun to do in this hobby! - Peter. -- Peter Vanvliet ([email protected]) Houston, Texas My Model Railroad Site <http://pmrr.org/> (RSS feed <http://pmrr.org/rss.xml> ) Fourth Ray Software <http://fourthray.com/> Houston S Gaugers <http://houstonsgaugers.org/> N.A.S.G. <http://nasg.org/> --
