24.07.06 at 13:34 hrs

Weekly Report No 299, CW 29

If the sun burns on the roof like this, one can assume that inside the building the temperature will rise a bit. too. That's why we have a climate control and ventilation.

The visitor only sees the climate channels above the layout. They're not really an optical highlight but are really vital to have.

Be it tropical hot or arctic cold outside; inside we thrive to keep the temperature and the humidity at a constant level of 22°C (72° F) and 42%.

For this need of ventilation you need quite a bit of material. All in all, we have 7 climate units to which roughly 600 meters (1,968.5 ft) of climate channels with 120 in- and outlets are attached.

The complete current consumption is in the range of 250 kW which means that we need 3,500 kWh per day from our energy suppliers in order to generate comfortable temparatures and fresh air. To achieve this, the units pump 65.000 m³ (2,295,453.327 cubic feet) per hour into the exhibition hall. This means that we exchange the complete amount of air in the exhibition area 4 times per hour. In addition, we need another 100,000 m³ (3,531,466.657 cubic feet) for the coldwater units which are responsible for the comfortable cool temparatures.

All this equipment contributes to a very comfortable 24°C (75° F) inside our rooms although outside we had a blazing 37°C (99 °F)! Here you see also the size of the room needed to suck in the fresh air. You could easily build a nice loft in here! :-)

As some of you already noted, the conversion of the train control to Railware has been completed. Apart from a few minor flaws, the layout runs great. Currently, we work on the improvement of the signal control and to find a way to run a special train from the Alps to Scandinavia and back during the regular hours. This conversion cost us nearly one year of work since we only could test-run during night hours and many changes had to be made to the hard- and software. It also meant to convert all locos to DCC data format and thus all locos had to be equipped with new decoders. At 230 engines, this was quite a task.

This picture shows a "screenshot" of mainline 0 with the areas Alps, St. Wendel, Knuffingen, and the transition area.

Here we see the mainline 1 areas Knuffingen main station and Harz mountains.

And here we have the track symbols of the branch lines: Branch 1 Harz mountains,

...the Knuffingen branch line,

... and the Alps / Cogwheel - lines.