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Saturday, November 24, 2018

Update on Digitrax's Recovery Efforts After the 2018 Hurricane

The following information was posted on the Digitrax Users Forum on groups.io.

Nov 18. 2018

Got a call from Digitrax this past week with info regarding their latest status and projections. Thought I'd share with my railroad friends with their permission.

Digitrax has been devastated by the recent storm damage, - worse than first thought, but they are back working from their secondary facility with limited resources. They got their first (and ONLY) phone line on Tues. My Dealer Rep was calling all of his dealers to help in passing along the impact of the damages, and their recovery efforts to our customer base. The damage far exceeded the impact to the building, which we saw in earlier pictures, as their on-hand inventory was totally destroyed, or damaged to the point that it may have caused customer problems if they tried to recover it, - so a total loss! (This also included some long awaited parts shipments which had been delivered the week preceding the storm.) They elected to reorder EVERYTHING in order to ensure the quality of their products delivered to customers would not be impacted by any latent damage issues. This process is well underway with parts arriving weekly. They cannot disseminate the info broadly since they still do NOT have any Internet access in the area.

Current projections are to prioritize efforts on the most sensitive products (Command Stations, and other high impact hardware, etc.), with items such as decoders & supplies following. Current expectations are for them to be up and running shortly (in their alternate facility), with the first projected shipments to dealers in mid December. They hope to resume normal deliveries beginning sometime after the first of the year (possibly mid to late January).

The insurance claims have been processed, and efforts are proceeding as best they can. As was explained to me, many of the component parts are delivered to them with a cardboard like backing for use in their production equipment, and were therefore heavily water damaged. They elected not to tempt fate by trying to use them, as more significant long term damage could occur to their machinery in the process, so ALL NEW components/supplies will be used, and are already arriving. Their hope is to resume shipping on a normal schedule in mid to late January 2019.

Stay tuned for additional updates as we receive them.

UPDATE Sat., Nov 24, 2018

Received a call from one of my friends and customers who resides in southern Florida, and was not impacted by the recent storm. He informed me that he had just reported a problem with his older Zephyr (DCS50) yesterday to Digitrax via their Digitrax Website Help Desk. (Evidently they either have internet back.) He received a prompt reply, with problem resolved. Based on this conversation (less than an hour ago), I would assume that they are monitoring their Website Help Desk, and are responding, indicating possibly additional phone service, and/or internet at this time. Since it is the weekend, it will be early this coming week before I can potentially get additional info which I will pass on through this thread, with appropriate date identification.

Let's hope for the best for their efforts, and try to not inundate them during this sensitive recovery period.


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Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Never, Never, Ever Do Anything Like This!!!

I recently purchased a used HO scale 89' coach passenger car and an interior for it. When I finally got around to opening it to put the interior in, this is what I found:



What you are looking at is a threaded rod running the entire length of the car used as a weight literally buried in some kind of goop used as glue to hold it in place. The goop also runs the entire length of the car!. It is virtually impossible to remove (I tried to cut into the goop).

Never, Never, Ever Do Anything Like This!!!

Model Railroad hobbyists know that locomotives and rolling stock have a way of circulating through the hobby for many years after they are made. Be it through estate sales, auctions, sales on sites such as Ebay (in this case) and many other ways. Please don't make it impossible for another hobbyist to modify a car or restore it to its original state (which I like to do). This car should have had some 1/4 oz. weights inserted at both ends of the car (and not buried in goop). These could easily have been removed by anyone needing to modify the car

From the point of view of an interior and passengers this car is a total loss.


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.

Thursday, November 8, 2018

Thinking About Getting Into Model Railroad Operations?

Maybe this article should be titled What Is/Are Model Railroad Operations?

I know a lot of people that won't even turn on a model railroad layout unless they are doing some kind of operation on it. I also know quite a few people that are just as happy doing nothing more than round-and-round. During the Christmas season our Modular Railroad Club (The Hostlers, Ogden Utah) has been lucky enough to be invited to setup our layout at a local mall and run for customers during the entire month of December. This is a round-and-round session because we are promoting the hobby as much as we can. However, when I run my trains on the layout I will do some small operations in one of the small yards we have. This really is nothing more than building a small train of five or six cars and switching out a locomotive or two but you would be amazed at the people that watch this intently. I've finally figured out that the average individual has only seen model railroads under the Christmas tree or during a display such as ours (round-and-round, get it???). They are fascinated watching trains do work!

So if you're thinking about operations and getting into that or maybe wondering what, exactly, operations are, take a look at the links below. They are downloadable Microsoft Office PowerPoint slide shows (you will have to have PowerPoint or PowerPoint Viewer to view these). They include JMRI Operations in the discussion but you'll see that it's not absolutely necessary for operations. One additional reference you may want to take a look at is Designing Model Railroad Operations.

Whatever you decide JUST HAVE FUN!!


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.