I’ve long wanted to take some “engineer’s eye” video of the layout, both because I think it’s more immersive, and because close-up views help to reveal weak areas in the visual design of the layout. At first I considered buying a train with a pre-installed camera (Kato has made one in the past) or buying the wireless camera and installing it myself. I actually ended up buying a camera, but never doing the work to install it, because it was clear that there were a lot of compromises in the system.
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Tags: Scenery, Video

I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about light. First it was the layout lighting, then it was the flickering interior lights, which annoyed me when I detailed my first commuter EMU, and which I wrote about nearly two months ago when I did the original planning for a flicker-prevention circuit. Now I’m back, having built several prototypes and refined my design. I think I have a winning solution.
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Tags: DCC, Lighting, Video

It was a busy day in the village overlooking the Sumida River. A steady parade of trains rolled by on the embankment: commuter trains bringing workers to the city, resort trains taking vacationers away, and freights carrying commodities to and from the ports on Tōkyō Bay. But then, all days are busy on the railroads of Tōkyō.
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Tags: Video, Micro Ace, Kato, Operation, Freight

I haven’t done much work on the layout recently. Aside from having fun running trains, I’ve been working on finishing up my first DCC train. I started added DCC decoders (motor and cab) to this train last October.
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Tags: DCC, Video, E231, Kato, Lighting

Sunday, 13 June 2010 was an historic day for Sumida Crossing. After the track was all cleaned and re-installed, and the wiring completed, it was time for the trains to take a run. The actual first loop was done by a “maintenance of way” train (actually an old Atlas B23 I was willing to sacrifice if I’d made some horrible wiring error). That done, I broke out the East-i E Inspection Train, and had it take a run to check out the pantograph clearance and general track usability. And I recorded it and made a short video.
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Tags: Kato, Riverside, Subway, MoW, Operation, Video, Subway Train