ToyTrains1's Blog

A little over a year ago, I posted my first video on YouTube.  Since then, the 80-odd videos have garnered an astonishing, to me, 900,000+ views.  Two of the most popular have been those showing the Southern Pacific Daylight steam locomotives, the GS-2 and the GS-4.  I've received quite a few messages asking if I could show the two of them double-headed.  This video is the result of those requests.  It shows the GS-2 in the lead with the GS-4 following.  They're hauling the matching set of passenger cars, which I've taken the time to equip with passengers.  The video is available in the usual three formats (Windows Media, Real Media, and MPEG-4) on the Multimedia page of my web site as well as on YouTube.  The YouTube link is below.

I finally received the add-on set of BMT Standard Subway Cars, so I shot a quick video of all six in action.  They make a very nice set and bring back memories of riding on them when I was young.

Yesterday, a large box with eight new Atlas woodsided reefers arrived from Andy Petersen. As with all Atlas reefers, they're exquisite! Seven are the 40 foot rebuilts and one is a 36 footer.  I've updated the master listing of Atlas reefers and their photos have been added to the photo roster.  Take a gander if you haven't seen them!

DCS v.4.0 has been released by MTH and is available, as always, as a free download from their web site.  It has lots of nifty new features, which are documented on the DCS Revision History page of my main web site and I think that once you try it, you'll really like it.  I find that I use the new quickset speed control a lot, and being able to clone the remote is very, very handy, especially when you have a lot of locomotives as I do!  But now for the caveat.

Based on my own testing, it appears that there is a bug which causes the Variable 1 track to lose both voltage control and DCS signal, but only on the original Rev. G model of the TIU.  The Rev. I TIU and the Rev. H1 TIU are not affected by this bug.  As a reminder, the Rev. I TIU has a sticker on the bottom that says Rev. I and the Rev. H1 TIU has a sticker on the bottom that says Rev. H1.  The Rev. G TIU has no model designation sticker on the bottom.  If you have the Rev. G TIU and you use the Variable 1 channel, I would recommend not upgrading to v.4.0 of DCS quite yet.  I expect that v.4.01 which fixes this bug will be out shortly.

::sigh::  At least it's a software-based system where such a bug can be fixed with an upload of corrected software.  Helluva beta tester I am, not to catch this for MTH before they released the software.