Larry's MRR Empire Vol.#5

[jackn2mpu]

Something must have happened over at YouTube because I remember your early videos where you had the rolling stock mounted camera for filming as the train moved and those were always a decent brightness. Are you using that same camera handheld to do your recent videos? If so, and going by what you say about your vids being nice & bright on your computer monitor then I'd put the onus of the problem on YouTube.

A thought just occurred to me: what gamma setting are you using on your camera and the files you're sending to YouTube? There's two common ones: 1.8 and 2.2; one of those will be darker than the others. Try changing that and see what happens when you upload a video to YT.

I know we've talked about this before, but did you ever get your high speed internet access setup? I know you were talking about going with a satellite feed. I'm thinking that may be your bottleneck. Something is throttling back your upload speed. Check your modem setup and stuff and maybe call your isp to see if they can help. I don't work on Windoze machines anymore; all Mac OSX Snow Leopard here; I can only give some general things to look at.

Still it shouldn't take 6 hours to send a 12 minutes video anywhere. What's the file size and what's your upload speed really? Not what your isp tells you it should be but what are you actually getting?

[jackn2mpu]

Originally Posted by Larry

Still it shouldn't take 6 hours to send a 12 minutes video anywhere. What's the file size and what's your upload speed really? Not what your isp tells you it should be but what are you actually getting?

I never did get the satellite hookup because they went way up on the price for installation & the monthly fee. I have 3 Giggs of Download & 1.8 Giggs of Upload from the local phone co. certain times of the day I don't even have that. The phone co. ISP told me if I would raise the Giggs to 10G's I would get a lot better service & I'm sure that's right, but, not at $25.00 more a month plus tax. I pay $34.00 a month now. I might switch over to the satellite sometimes this summer. The only reason I haven't already is the price & having to change all the Email addy's on everything.
Also, you can't use them as an email addy you have to get a GMail acct.[/QUOTE]
$34 a month is relatively cheap depending on what your speeds really are. The numbers you mentioned can't be the speeds; are you sure you didn't mean megs? Heck of a difference. Years ago I was paying $60 a month for 3 meg dsl & phone service and depending on the weather conditions that speed would drop.

Remember that dsl communicates over the old copper twisted pair lines that have been in place since Edison (or thereabouts). Unless your phone company has recently laid fiber optic you're not going to get decent high speed over a copper line - that's just the nature of the electronics of it all.

Also distance from the phone company central office will affect your speed capabilities. 3 meg dsl (considered high speed) typically has a distance limit of 20000 fet from the CO. Your speed won't raise all that much on satellite over what you have now (don't believe the hype on speeds) and you'll have data limits that are very severe.

Shame you can't get FIOS - you'd love it. 20 to 25 meg speeds minimum and no data limit. The triple play bundle I have for HDTV/phone/internet is $148 a month. My payment would be less if I didn't have an unlisted/unpublished phone number. There are different bundles if you don't want all 3 services.

[jackn2mpu]

Originally Posted by Larry

FIOS out here where I live is probably the same w/out any TV or Phone. I live 4 miles from town & Yes our phone line is the old 2 line copper from the road back to the house. The phone co. out at the road uses Fibreoptics. They wanted me to pay $1500.00 to run a Fibreoptic cable from the road to the house. The people next door paid the amt. to get it, but they still wanted me to pay the same. It was the same w/having a landline. They were charging me $99.00 for just the phone plus $34.00 for the puter. I only wanted a reg. phone line w/no xtra's, but, when I cancelled my Dish network they added all these xtras, so, I cancelled my phone & went w/2 cell phones(wife & me).
Our phone co. has lost over 40,000 customers in the last 2 years because of their practices. Seems like it doesn't bother them though.

I can pretty much guarantee you that the price for FIOS is different for each thing you want from FIOS. Excluding any install costs here we go:
Triple Play - phone/tv/internet for 24 months $95/month
High speed internet alone $25/month 1 year price guarantee
Internet & TV $80/month 1 year price guarantee
Directv/hi speed internet/phone $60/month with 24 month agreement with Directv required

Do yourself a favor and check out their website at: http://www22.verizon.com/
and you may find you can do some great things without spending a bundle, and probably less than you're paying now. They have a way to check what packages are available in your area.

Not a FIOS salesman just a very satisfied customer. Don't be scared to check them out.

[jackn2mpu]

Originally Posted by Larry

I bought a Life-Like Proto 2000 BL2 off of Ebay about a month ago & it has been running real rough ever since I bought it. Today I took it apart & it had 4 broken gears on the axles & someone had put these weights attached to the motor & inside of the roof. Also it had a gang(8) of resistors for 2 tiny lights glued into the nose & back of the shell. I already mounted LED's & then I have to get some new axles.
I thought at 1st someone had glued magnets to the sides of the motor, but it was only small weights. Weird.

Those BL2's are ancient my friend. I think they're one of the first things out of LL in the P2K line. I also remember that the 'broken gear syndrome' was endemic to early P2K stuff (BL2's and Geeps). Hope you get them working right. Are you going to DCC them?

[h44]

Originally Posted by Larry

I spent about an hour just cleaning up all the crap that was on the outside edge of the tracks & all the paper & spacers that was under the tracks.
As soon as I can I will add ballast to the outside edge of the tracks, but only fine ballast between the ties on the inside. No more plaster. I used new Flex & just a little of used flex. New Atlas turnouts & used Ground Throws that I saved. here's the new track pictures.

i lke your layout question about the first picture, was there a tornado or are there a lot of bad drivers on your layout?

[joed2323]

larry, is this a scrap yard or basically just a junk pyle?? i like it..

Also what is the business where all the construction equipment is parked at? I like it

[jackn2mpu]

Originally Posted by Larry

Remember page #1 of this new Thread I was showing photo's of the Bachmann Spectrum Turntable that I had just bought & was installing.
Well, after a week of trying to get it wired up & finding four tracks that were completely dead inside the TT & the little contact tabs that contact the tracks on the TT broke off I took the darn thing out today. I'm just going to do something else & give up on Turntables. I was thinking about moving the big engine house that I scratchbuilt to where the TT was & using turnouts from the main side track thru the yards to ea. door of the eng. house.
I was hoping to get some used #6 Atlas Turnouts, but that didn't happen, so, I'll have to order all new ones to make this work. That way I can store about 15 engines in this area.

Sadly you've found out why Bachmann is sometimes referred to as Botchmann. Consistent quality is not their thing.

Used turnouts unless they've come off your own layout and have never been glued down, particularly Atlas, would be just another waste of money and time. The point assemblies don't take to too much handling like use, pull-up and re-use. More likely than not you'd have to do serious tune-up work on them. Then again it looks like you're using code 100 track so you might get lucky there; I know the code 83 stuff they have is a bit on the fragile side when re-using (been there, done that).

[jackn2mpu]

Originally Posted by Larry

2 years ago I sold a mess of almost new brass & NS #4 turnouts which I could use right now really cheap. You always need something after you sell it, usually the next day. I was hoping I could get some #6's in Atlas from someone that had changed over to Shinora, Walthers or Peco. I never throw away or sell #6 turnouts. It's real easy to tuneup a turnout in old brass or NS by tightning the rivets & beveling the ends of the tracks or whatever it takes. I've got old Atlas Turnouts that have never given me any problems from 3 previous layouts. I never, ever glue any of my tracks or turnouts down to the cork roadbed. Any that I ever do have problems with I strip them down for parts so no one else will get them by mistake.

If you don't glue track or turnouts to the roadbed then how do you hold down ballast? In the act of using a wetting agent and water/glue mix to secure the ballast that itself will hold trackage down such that you can remove any nails used to temporarily hold the track down - been there done that. Unless you just lay the ballast down loose and that's never a good idea.

And I would never use let alone re-use brass track even if I got it for free except as a display track and not for operation. Keeping that stuff clean is a bigger nightmare than it's worth.

[Icheymon]

Larry did you get the TGV train running yet?

[Icheymon]

Nice, very nice! Glad it found a good home....