19: EC-11 has a clear signal ahead in Summit as it
passes the station. That’s the business district of
Summit on the far left. The buildings there are HO, cre-
ating a nice forced perspective.
19
Structure Light and Structure Dark by the Pennsy — what imag-
ination!) that I custom-mixed using formulas available from the
Pennsylvania Railroad Technical and Historical Society.
Electrical
All of the locomotives are equipped with command con-
trol (TMCC, or TrainMaster Command Control from Lionel),
which is what makes my style of operation possible. I did
operate briefly with conventional control prior to the com-
mercial availability of kits to convert the locomotives to
TMCC. Starting in July 2001, the layout switched to 100%
TMCC operation. I like to joke that all of my locomotives have
Lionel’s control system in them, even though almost none of
them were made by Lionel!
Pennsylvania & Western RR - 12
20: The cabin car on EC-11 is about to enter the tunnel
leading to Pittsburgh and Conway Yard staging.
20
There is no central control panel. Rather, I built small panels
into the layout fascia wherever they are needed (mostly for
switch and electromagnetic uncoupler control in local switch-
ing areas, and to control the staging yards).
There are five power districts on the railroad, each supplied
with 16 volts AC at 10 amps. The main power bus wires are 10
gauge solid copper house wires. Track block connections use
stranded wire from 12 to 16 gauge, depending on the length of
the run. There are transformers under that layout that supply
power for switch machines, uncoupling electromagnets, acces-
sories, lights, signals, and relays.
The switch machines in Annville Yard are all Tortoises with
LED indicators on the yard control panels. Some other hard-
to-reach turnouts have twin-coil machines, but turnouts
MRH-Mar 2014
