Construction history of the Jersey Subdivision cont.
3/27/2006 Landscaping is in high gear. The crew hopes to finish the Sculptamold on one side of Horseshoe Mountain in the next 2 days. Rock formations can be seen growing out of the sides of the mountains and hills. A new pair of Broadway Limited C30-7s can be seen in the subdivision.
3/12/2006 Landscaping on Guernsey Pass begins
3/11/2006 The scenery crews are starting on Guernsey Pass tomorrow. In the mean time Jersey makes a visit to inspect prior to work beginning. The first "Geeps" are seen in the subdivision. The engineers let two GP-40s out of the locomotive shops with their new #5 couplers and painted handrails.
3/8/2006 After long debate, the track crews decided to blast away parts of Horseshoe Mountain and superelevate the subroadbed. Needless to say the engineers were not happy about the additional delays but in the end, they agreed. To pass the time they pulled the 9/11 locomotive out of the locomotive house and took it for a spin. Today the track crews gave the green light and certified all track as derailment free. You can see in Horseshoe mountain they took an extra precaution and added a reralier section of track. The scenery crews now have to return to work.
3/4/2006 The track crews found a derailment problem inside of Horseshoe Mountain. After a few days of studying the problem they found a solution, superelevate the incline. Pictures below show screws driven through the outside ties to lower the inside rail. You can also see SD40-2 #1641 testing a string of hoppers inside of Horseshoe Mountain. The track crew has asked for one more day of testing and repairs. The RRkits Locobuffer arrived. This will give the engineers computer control of the layout and decoder programming. You can see the track cleaner getting its decoder installed.
2/26/2006 The track crews are almost finished. You can see them running a string of 100 ton hopper cars through the subdivision and where they pulled up a faulty turnout for replacement. Some of the new DCC decoders have arrived. You can see SD60 #6564 getting outfitted with a new decoder. SD50 #6507 gets MU'd with SD60 #6564 to do track testing and DCC decoder checks. The engineers have unloaded the locomotive shop to test the track.
2/18/2006 Over the weekend Engineer Jersey was spotted touring the subdivision. Click here to see the entire tour..
2/15/2006 The electrical and track crews can be seen running a pair of 8-40CWs and an SD40-2 around to find problems with stalls, pauses and derailments. A number of spikes were driven to improve the track vertical stability.
2/5/2006 Two crews have been working the past few weeks. The electrical crew has the Digitrax Super Chief system installed and functioning. They also installed electronic circuit breakers and a reversing unit, both from Tony's Trains. The DC circuit breakers were removed and replaced with LEDs, which are powered from the electronic units. The terrain crew has finished with Horseshoe Mountain for now and has been working on Guernsey Pass. You can see that they have quite a bit completed. The electrical crews did start installing some of the facia but as you can see below, they need to clean up after themselves.
1/22/2006 Construction is now in high gear. The final touches are being added to Horseshoe mountain, including a removable section to access the track, should a tunnel derailment occur. Of special note is the Digitrax Super Chief Radio system for DCC control has been ordered. The engineers are excited about this new level of control and function.
1/16/2006 The foam work for Horsehoe mountain is almost complete. Lots of foam carving has taken place and many different hot wire and hot knife foam tools were tested. For the big stuff the standby hand saw was used. An electric knife was even spotted once cutting foam.
12/28/2005 Strike over and construction resumes
11/23/2003 The backdrop is painted and Horsehoe mountain starts to take form with foam but work comes to a halt as the construction crews strike over long working hours.
4/13/2003 Things are starting to take shape.
