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What's going on with trains, March 2025

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My sister, Annie, asked what was up with trains? Here's some status. I love my current layout. It has two loops. A siding. An inner loop with a crossing, or, essentially, a figure 8 within a loop. The 2 loops are interconnected by a double crossover. It has an elevated section that crosses the lower in two places, with the longer via a trestle bridge. All this goodness on a 30" x 60" Ikea desk that cranks up and down.  My command station supports wireless and I typically run trains from my phone or, as shown in the pic, from a tablet using Engine Driver. Both locos' throttles and all 6 turnout controls are displayed on one screen without toggling. There can be a lot of action with this layout. It's easy to run two trains. In the same direction, chasing each other.  Or in opposite directions - on the two loops, inner and outer. The train on the inner loop can simply traverse the loop or can visit the station wh...
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DCC-EX and EXRAIL automation

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A disaster with my Digitrax Zephyr Express meant I had to ship it to the factory in December for repairs with no firm return date. 😬  What should I do? Build a DCC-EX Command Station ? I had the parts 1 . This had been my intent all along. But at the time, I lacked confidence, punted, and bought the Digitrax. An opportunity to correct a mistake? The command station is built around an ESP32 WROOM Arduino UNO compatible board with built-in WiFi I followed DCC-EX's instructions . They're thorough. And include workarounds to the bugs on the Espduino board. Everything came together as intended. Then I uploaded the software using EX-Installer. 2  Easy-peasy. The motor driver shield with 2x 1-1.5 A channels to drive main and programming tracks. Workarounds are visible from pins bent out from the side and jumper wires in the headers.  The combination of the 2 boards is smaller than my mouse. The cables are the power and track connections. Once the command station was assem...
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Stanford Crew Reunion, May 20-22, 2025, Seattle, WA

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Hi Steve, Thanks for reaching out. I have quite a few docs and albums I can share with you, which I'll do below. And I'll send a few pics annotated with names to faces. But I don't have time at the moment to write an "article" that might be more suitable for the newsletter. But let's start with what I have and see where that gets us. The Class of '75 Stanford Crew Reunion, Seattle, May 2025 This is the third "event" where some number of Stanford Crew alums from the mid 70's have convened in Seattle. I moved to Seattle in 1990. By 2011 I was ready to dip my toe back in the water and I've been rowing at Pocock in Seattle ever since. The rowing in Seattle is excellent. And Pocock is a good place to host alumni events.  The first of these alumni events commemorated a teammate who had died from cancer, Mark Grosenbaugh, '75. Mark, Sam Francis, '75, Dick Bailey, '76, and I, '75, spent the summer of '75 trying out for the US...
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