Silicon Valley Lines

Watch our Transitional Ops session on our 23' x 72' bi-level layout live tonight on Youtube. We will have multiple remote operators and a socially-distanced skeleton crew in the layout room tonight. Stream starts around 7:45PDT and trains should start rolling shortly after. https://youtu.be/HzWszGf-8Pg

Dave and Bernhard gave an indepth talk about "Remote Operations at Silicon Valley Lines" at yesterday's NMRAx Virtual Convention. Here is a link to the recording. https://youtu.be/3lu0SZ9wjj0?t=10920

TSG multimedia released a nice video with Bernhard explaining our approach to remote operations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvJH3eVY0H8

James and Bernhard participated in TSG Multimedia's Crew Lounge discussion on "Modeling during the pandemic" along with Seth Neumann, James Regier, and our host John Abatecola. We covered quite some ground during the discussion. Take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I86ppvsdg-k .

Next weekend (Sept 26), Bernhard and Dave will present at NMRAx "Remote Operations at Silicon Valley Lines". The talk starts at 3pm Pacific Time / 6pm Eastern.

Another addition to the SVL locomotive fleet is in the works. These units started out as Atlas RSD-5 in CNW livery. Decals are now applied. Dullcote and weathering are next.

We were hauling a lot of cars yesterday, and told the yardmasters to give us all the power they could. So we ended up with this amalgamation of SVL power, with a GP50, a GP9R, a C8-40, and a pair of GP38-2s. We'll be a bit more careful next time, but hey, it pulled unassisted from Bakersfield to Nowheres!

With all the recent fires, landslide risks are at an all time high. In response, SVL management has now installed a rock slide detector to help warn train crews of any impending hazards.

If the Internet connection at the club holds up we will try to live-stream tomorrow's ops session with remote operators on Youtube. Check it out starting 10:45am PDT until the batteries are empty.

We’ve posted a brief write-up about setting up the RaspberryPi Camera Cars at SVL. https://siliconvalleylines.com//08/04/the-svl-cabcam-proj/

Fresh from the shops, SVL's GP9r 4321 is ready to help with some more recent upticks in passenger service.

PiCar Camera Car Fun Run. Raspberry Pi Zero + Camera + Battery Pack + OSB + Google Meet + OpenVPN + JMRI + EngineDriver. This was a screen capture from a live video conference tonight. Another club member was controlling the motive power from EngineDriver from the Santa Cruz Mountains. We’re going to have a video and a clinic real soon now.

Some thoughts on a recent socially distanced ops session. https://siliconvalleylines.com/2020/06/29/1063/