Jun 22, 2011

A new soldering hazard

So - we had really bad storms in the Chicago area last night.  Shortly before they hit, I was under the layout, holding a soldering iron in a kinda tricky position, finishing up a DCC system connection.  The power flickered several times just then, leaving me in the dark, twisted under the layout, w/ a hot iron delicately positioned between other wiring, etc.  It was, er, an interesting moment. 

Thankfully, the flickers stabilized long enough for me to finish the connection and shut everything down.  The whole family was back in the basement soon after, while 80+ gusts and bright green lightning flashed outside.  Lots of huge branches / tree parts down afterward.

Jun 19, 2011

A new photo resource, and cutting umbilical cords

So, a friend has introduced me to yet another wonderful photo resource - Telluride Historical Museum's new photo collection.  Of particular interest is about 1500 RGS photos, all available for viewing (w/ some searching, mind you), and all available for sale.

And - there's a second resource that's coming online (literally) - which is Richard Dorman's massive photo collection.  There were some initial birth pains with bringing this online, but it's a well-cataloged index to hundreds - maybe thousands - of RGS photos.  All of these are also for sale.

I haven't really had time to explore either of these collections deeply yet; I'm very far behind on misc. updates to the website, and still haven't even finished the URL updates for the Denver Public Library's photo collection - but there seems to be a rich treasure-trove of history here.

On another front, I have been making progress on the layout's conversion to DCC, and finally - just this weekend - finished all the detection circuit and other wiring changes I needed to make, and yesterday finally cut the umbilical cord, as it were (ie, the old Keller Onboard power buss).  So now I'm committed, eh?  The layout no longer runs until I finish the new connections.  It shouldn't take that long, as all this prep work has made the old buss ready to switch to the new power districts, etc.  Should be fun!