Model RailRoad Manufacturing Plant Closed

Unexpectedly, one of the model railroad plants in China has closed. Apparently, the factory closure was collateral damage from the current environmental rampage China is on to clean up their situation and to meet global agreements. That's the general feeling after this author canvassed several forums concerning the closure.

Bowser posted on their facebook page:

We have been informed that our foreign factory is closed. This will delay HO and N Ready To Run cars, trolleys, Cal Scale and our locomotives. We are looking for a new factory. All delivery dates are now TBA (To Be Announced). Thanks for all support you have given Bowser.

And Atlas, posted on their website on 7/27:

Atlas has received notification from one of our locomotive and rolling stock suppliers that they have closed their factory. (Please note Atlas track and accessories are NOT affected by this delay.) Atlas is currently working with our network of suppliers to transfer the projects to others for completion. This will cause a delay in some previously ordered products. We apologize for this delay, thank you for your continued support, and will update you with more information as it becomes available.

According to Bob The Train Guy the closing also affects other lines.

It is going to be an interesting year for my suppliers. One plant closes unexpectedly and shuts down production of models from some of my favorite producers. The list so far includes Intermountain, Bowser, Atlas, Fox Valley, TrainWorx and Bluford. With the current problems getting track I am not sure of the short term future of the hobby.

According to another forum discussion, those not affected are Athearn, Walthers, Scale Trains, Bachmann and Rapido. Jason from Rapido has already posted that he is willing to help where he can.

I agree with Bob that in the short term it's going to be a bit of a rough ride for the hobby.

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Engine Driver Consisting

This post refers to Engine Driver v2.20.59 - JMRI v.12.0

Engine Driver has very much simplified engine consisting. Up until v2.20.57 though it had one missing feature that bothered me and turned off some other model railroaders. That was the application's inability to do what Digitrax calls Universal consisting. That is, before placing an engine in a consist, run it first in the direction you want it to follow in the consist (if it is reversed in the consist it needs to run in reverse first) and then add it to the consist. In older versions of Engine Driver this would not work. In order to get an engine to run in reverse in a consist you had to change its normal direction of travel via CV29 bit 0. Most of the guys I ran with did not want to do that. Why should I have to reprogram an engine to run it backwards in a consist and then have to reprogram it again when I want to run it normally?

Problem solved!! The new version of Engine Driver supports universal consisting and you don't even have to run an engine in the direction it needs to run before consisting it and no CV programming involved! Let's use an example to demonstrate:

We have three locomotives we want to consist - 3120, 3121 and 3123. We want 3123 to run in reverse behind the other two engines.

After opening Engine Driver and connecting to your server, press Loco, punch in 3120 and acquire it. Now Press loco, punch in 3121 and acquire it. Notice the right hand column now has 'Front' listed for each. Now back to the Loco screen, press Loco, punch in 3123 and acquire it. Now press the 'Front' for 3123 and what happens? The 'Front' changes to 'Rear'. Increase the speed of the 3 engine consist now and it works!!!

It doesn't get any easier than that. Thank you Steve Todd.

One thing to watch out for in Preferences is to make sure that under 'Loco Select Preferences' 'Drop Loco Before Acquire' is unchecked. If it's checked you'll never form a consist.

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If you have an idea for a blog post here, let me know. If I can comment on it, I will or I'll see if someone else can and post it.