Ketchup: Store Updates and DCC

It has been a while since I last posted, as I have been pre-occupied by many things. The shop has been growing with new inventory and our volume of repair work is increasing, keeping me busy. We have installed some new shelving and racks to better organize the additional items. I have also been working on an installation of an elevated G-scale railway in a local restaurant (more about that in future posts). All of this plus a little home remodeling project has kept my attention away from this blog.

When I get notice of pre-order opportunities, I try to pick up a few items that I think would be of interest to my customers. One issue with pre-orders, is that once entered, you don't hear about them for quite some time, until they magically appear. Accordingly, I sometimes forget, what I have pre-ordered and order similar items. This happened to me this winter and in January, I got a surprise and am now overloaded with CSX locomotives in HO and N; in DC and DCC. We have SD40's, an AC4400CW, a GP-15' ES 40DC's, ES44AC's and a selection of RF&P GP40's.

We also have many other new locomotives in stock B&O, ACL, Navy, Chessie System, AC&W, Penn Central, N&W, C&O, NS, and others. You can find these on the website or drop by the shop and browse.

We have also increased our stock of Tamiya spray paints, Kato UniTrack in HO and N, Labelle Lubricants, structure kits, and other items, We have also added DCC systems and decoders to our lineup from NCE and ESU.

I have completed a number of DCC upgrades for customers. These include sound and motor control. I generally limit these to DCC ready locomotives, but will do DCC conversions for larger scale HO, S, and O locomotives that do not require structural modifications to accommodate the equipment. Simple DCC installations without sound can be done for most DC locomotives easily, since small decoders, such as the ESU LokPilot Mini decoders are smaller than the size of a postage stamp and fit easily in most diesel locomotives. Steam locomotives that are not DCC-ready can be challenging where space in the boiler is limited.

ESU LokSound decoders are programmable with many high quality sounds. ESU has an extensive library of North American and European locomotive sound files. These can be installed via the LokProgrammer, and can be done in the shop. Both LokPilot and LokSound decoders include RailCom, which causes your locomotive to be automatically recognized when put on the track, saving you having to enter the locomotive address to connect to the locomotive.

A number of the ESU decoders are multi-modal and can detect and operate on AC, DC and DCC. This provides the flexibility for O and S scale locomotives to be safely run on the same layout as older AC locomotives or on DCC layouts. This is great for those who take their locomotives to club layouts and avoids the potential of frying your DCC decoder by accidentally placing the locomotive on an AC track.

Hopefully that will give a taste of what we are up to. There is more coming as I have a backlog of information to post. Look for posts to be on a more regular basis going forward.