BKTY boxcars seen in Salina, KS - May 20, 2021

Observed in Oklahoma, November 2020

Seen in Southern Texas in October 2020

Seen in Southwest Kansas in November 2020

Awesome in full screen mode!

It's been a bit quiet on the Mighty MKT lately, and especially this blog. The Covid virus and then some health problems, have contributed to the lack of activity. We had a great operating session a few weeks back, with the added twist of a remote dispatcher! More on that later.

This posting is all about installing a new, wonderful #8 Kasper Mk VII rev 3 turnout at East Rhineland. For a long while, the old turnout would periodically short, and I had spent HOURS trying to find the problem. It didn't short every time - sometimes 6-axle locomotive would short, but not every time. It was maddening. I implored on my turnout ninja, my buddy Joe, and he came through with a sweet #8 to replace the existing micro engineering #6 turnout. It looks great and performs awesomely.

Thanks Joe!

Joe waiting for the soldering iron to heat up before performing a surgical installation on the fully scenicked portion of Rhineland.



Joe installing the new tortimus throwbar hole for the new #8 turnout



Amateur video of the installed turnout.
Note that the ties still need to be cut to the correct length

While I'm linking to videos, I'll add this link to an introductory video for the new (2018) book, Show-Me Katy.

I can't recommend it highly enough! It has a ton of pics and info about the MKT running through Missouri.

If you are a Katy Railroad enthusiast (and who isn't?), you need to check out this new (2019) DVD of the Katy running in Missouri.

I'll let the narrator of the video provide more details, but I bought it, watched it, and recommend that you add it to your collection!

Great stuff!

Here, courtesy of Jason, a fine local videographer and train buff, is video of an operating session conducted in February 2019, in conjunction with an N-scale Op Weekend in Kansas City.

This video shows the dispatcher panel using JMRI.

This time in the July/August 2018 issue of Cowcatcher Magazine.

Found in a dead line in southern Kansas


Nabbed off the inter webs. Location unknown.

The Columbia Business Times has an interesting article about the old Stewart Road Bridge, that used to cross the MKT Columbia Branch at Columbia, Missouri. The bridge was built in 1920, and crossed Flat Creek and the MKT Railroad.

Link to article here.

Interesting article about new signs on the Columbia Branch, indicating the locations of flag stops along the nine-mile branch line. The article also has several interesting anecdotes about the branch line.

The flag stops identified include:
- Webster (mile marker 0.5-0.75)
- Brushwood (mm 2.25)
- Limerick (mm 5.75)

Also, the interpretive sign shows the track and industries served by the MKT.

Worth a read. Check it out here.

When I saw this on the MKT Facebook page, I knew I needed to add this to the blog!

This picture shows worker building the tunnel at Rochport. At Rochport, Missouri, a knob of granite extended out to the river, and it was too large to completely remove or daylight, so they blasted a tunnel through it. This is the only tunnel on the entire MKT track.

This photo is interesting to me for several reasons. The lack of trees is fascinating, because that entire area is completed wooded now.




Here is what the west side of the tunnel looks like today:

Here, courtesy of Jason, a fine local videographer and train buff, is video of an operating session conducted in February 2019, in conjunction with an N-scale Op Weekend in Kansas City. The video starts out with portions of my orientation session, then has some great footage of semi-sweet green on the St. Louis Sub.

Well, I'm back after a long pause in blogging.

Those who know me will recall that I was involved in the NMRA National Convention in Kansas City in 2018. Some have said that it was an enjoyable and rewarding experience. I wouldn't go that far. Never again.

Anyway, I'm back and hope to catch you up on the improvements that have been made to the Mighty Katy in the past 6-8 months, including:

- New turnouts at New Franklin Industrial Park
- New sorely needed turnout at West St. Charles
- Additional track at the St. Charles auto rack facility (YAY!)
- New turnouts at BOTH ends of the siding at New Franklin

Special thanks are due to my buddy, Joe, who continues to amaze me with his efforts to remove suck from my layout.

I'll post some photos of the new track later.

My good friend, Dan Munson, came over the other night and took some great photos of the Mighty MKT.

Dan uses a post-processing photo stacking tool called Helicon Focus to obtain great depth of field in his photos!

Each final photo is a composite of 10-30 individual photos, each with a slightly different focal plane. The software then 'stack' the focused portion of each photo to create a new photo.

The results are nothing short of amazing!

Shot during a PrairieRail Invitational op session in February 2018. Thanks Jason!

Glen Park about 1983, or so I was told

Things are about to get AWESOME at the New Franklin Industrial Park!

My buddy, Joe, has graciously spent some of his valuable winter vacation time crafting this incredible ladder to replace the Peco turnouts currently installed!

Stand by for additional updates!

This photo was taken from the north side of the Missouri River (Howard County, Missouri), south of Franklin Yard.

It is looking south across the river to Boonville (Cooper County, Missouri. Probably taken in 1931 or so.

John Barringer was a Katy President and railroad enthusiast.

Established in 1984 as a special collection of the St. Louis Mercantile Library, the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library stands today as one of North America’s largest and finest railroad history collections. Named after the noted twentieth century railroad executive, John W. Barriger, III (1899-1976), whose collection forms its heart, the Library has grown to become a major resource for the history of railroad business and technology as well as for the study of railroading’s multidimensional influence on the American economy, society and culture.

Mr. Barriger took his camera with him as he investigated railroads as part of this work with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and later as the President of the Monon, P&LE, Katy and Boston and Maine Railroads.

The online library contains nearly 35,000 railroad photos from his travels.

Click here to go to the FLICKR library site


Paola, Kansas depot


Boonville, Missouri depot


Likely the depot at Franklin Yard

A westbound freight runs by the Rhineland turn working at Westinghouse.


Westbound freight passing Rocchport bluffs. Franklin yard drill track in the foreground.


Intermodal train DSL passing through Boonville, with the Union Pacific local working in the background.

Drone footage!


Katie Bridge at Sunset

Today, 29 years ago, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas and Union Pacific Railroad merger was finalized.

I recently came across a flyer describing the Katy Merger, and found it very interesting. The photos are a bit blurry, so I have transcribed the text:

Why is Union Pacific acquiring Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad?
The M-K-T, commonly call the Katy, is a vital part of Union Pacific's main route between Kansas and Texas because of trackage rights agreements. Those agreements allow Union Pacific trains to run on Katy tracks. Because of Katy's increasingly difficult financial situation, Union Pacific is concerned about the future of those tracks. UP has trackage rights on 380 miles of Katy lines. Katy also has rights on some Unopn Pacific routes.

If Union Pacific has such trackage rights, why is a merger necessary?
The merger is critical for M-K-T. Already in a weak financial position, Katy faces a multitude of competitive pressures. Survival of M-K-T is vital to Union Pacific and to shippers in the Katy service area.

If Union Pacific has such trackage rights, why is a merger necessary?
There are significant differences in the competitive aspects between this merger and the parallel Santa Fe-Southern Pacific merger. While the Santa Fe-Southern Pacific merger would have reduced rail service to only one carrier in several markets without trackage rights for other railroads, no such major loss of competition will happen in UP-Katy service areas.

Won't a merger between Union Pacific and M-K-T reduce competition and cause increased rates?
Following the merger at least two and in some cases, three separate and independent rail systems will provide service between major points in Missouri, Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma where UP and M-K-T operate. In addition there is substantial truck and barge operation in these markets.

What other railroads serve the M-K-T territory?
Other carriers in the market are are Kansas City Southern, Burlington Northern, Santa Fe, and Southern Pacific.

How will the merger help Katy shippers?
Union Pacific will upgrade and improve maintenance of Katy. Upgrading will involve rail programs, tie renewals and improvements to the signal system. Without the merger M-K-T could not make these needed improvements. A well-maintained railroad will benefit shippers through more reliable, efficient and safer service. Katy shipper will also gain single system service to West Coast ports, more Gulf Coast ports and major additional Midwestern gateways including Chicago and Memphis, and single line service to Mexico. They will also have access to Union Pacific's vastly larger freight car fleet (6,000 M-K-T cars compared with 77,600 cars on the Union Pacific). Union Pacific's financial strength will give M-K-T shippers long range transportation stability.

Will the merger benefit Union Pacific shippers?
The merger will guarantee key routes between the Midwest and the Gulf will be preserved and maintained to UP standards. The shorter routes will benefit Union Pacific shippers in parts of Kansas. For example Union Pacific will be able to reduce the distance between Salina, Kansas, in the middle of the grain belt, and Fort Worth by 118 miles.

Doe the merger include the former Rock Island line from Salina south to Dallas?
Yes. The merger includes the former Rock Island route now known as the Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas Railroad (OKT).

Will there be any abandonment as a result of the merger?
There is extensive overlap of operations and service between Union Pacific and Katy. Some segments of both Union Pacific and Katy will be abandoned. Other segments will simply change from primary to secondary main lines.

What will happen to employees whose positions are eliminated?
The merger will result in a substantial reduction in force. Employees whose positions are eliminated will likely be entitled to a variety of severance options. These options may include early retirement, severance payments, and in some instances, New York Dock labor protection routinely imposed by the Interstate Commerce Commission as a condition to the approval of railroad mergers.

What are the terms of the agreement?
Union Pacific will pay $110 million for the Katy and will assume $256 million in outstanding debts.

Why was the plan to acquire the Katy announced, then cancelled?
Union Pacific had reached an agreement in 1985 to acquire the Katy, but the deal was cancelled when the Katy was unable to acquire a specified number of registered certificates that had been issued when the railroad was reorganized in 1958. Under the terms of the certificates, the M-K-T is prohibited from paying dividends until 60 percent of the certificates are redeemed. A new offer to acquire a sufficient number of certificates has succeeded, allowing the agreement to go forward.

When will the merger take place?
By statue, the Interstate Commerce Commission has up to 31 months to act following the filing of a merger application. The application to acquire the Katy was filed Nov 14, 1986. Union Pacific requested the commission adopt an expedited schedule. The commission has approved this request with hearings scheduled to begin August 3, 1987. A decision is expected in early 1988.

The Springfield/Bella Vista group, hard at work on the Mighty MKT. East Rhineland is in the foreground.

We approach perfection asymptotically.

I’ve been in a operation state of mind lately. I recently hosted the nice folks from Springfield and Bella Vista (Missouri and Arkansas). After all the work it takes to prepare for an operations session (including the track and wheel cleaning and the preparation of session snacks), I decided, upon the generally successful completion of the session, to call another in two weeks. The train room was clean, the crew lounge was clean, the track was clean – so I wanted to strike again while the iron was hot (soldering iron?).

A crazy thing happened prior to the first session. I was at peace. Sure, I had a several items on my to-do list, but I diligently worked on them and crossed them off one by one. I was ready. The layout was ready.

The session had its usual number of glitches. The DCC short beepers went off way too often for my satisfaction (I use the CVP Products ZoneShare products, and have the layout divided into eight zones, each using a separate tone to indicate a shorting condition). Most of those shorts were caused by train engineers running into turnouts thrown against them. Operators paying more attention will cure that.

A couple of signal aspects were found to be backwards (red for green, and vice versa), and those were easily corrected in the hour after the session, thanks to my detailed wiring and logic notebooks. It was a quick fix in JMRI to correct swap red and green aspects. I will watch the signals closely next session to make sure that they are correct.

I had a couple of logic glitches on the dispatcher panel, the most obvious being that the St. Charles autoramp tunout was being thrown when the East Boonville turnout was set for the siding!! This was an obvious programming error on my part, since they are in no way connected. After the session, it was quick work to pull up those turnout configuration and, sure enough, I had somehow inadvertently told JMRI to throw the autoramp turnout along with the siding turnout. Go figure! It was a quick fix.

The most frustrating aspect of the session, was the period “glitches” experienced by the dispatching panel that would blink the display, then lose all block occupancy for an instant, then correct. However, it was just enough to allow the block tracking variable to lose their train identification. The behavior was observed at a previous session, and I had planned for it by building a separate screen/panel, that could quickly restore the trains whenever the dispatching panel “glitched”.

The glitching behavior occurred several times during the session, and I determined to locate the cause and fix it before the next session. I recalled that it had not originally glitched and that these errors were a recent phenomenon. My Consultant for all things electrical (Joe from Kasper Electronics) suggested that it may be either a bad USB/485 dongle or bad RS422 chips on the SUSIC. I swapped out the SUSIC with a spare I have, and the glitching behavior went away! I now have several replacement RS422 chips on order from Digikey.

Another item that had bothered me from the session was that we couldn’t see the status of the east St. Charles turnout on the screen. The turnout is wired to that the block show occupied. Several times during the session my Ace Dispatcher (Joe) commented “Why is that block still showing occupied? The train left long ago!” It was a thrown turnout at east St. Charles. We couldn’t see that the turnout was thrown on the screen. So I wired an input line to the spare set of contacts on the torti (the other set of contacts being used to power the frogs) and, with a little bit of coding, we now can see the status of the turnout on the dispatcher’s screen. It’s the CMRI difference, baby!

The point is that, little by little, I am whittling down the irksome and bothersome items on the layout. And as the irksome items become less and less, my anxiety level also drops.

Who knows, maybe someday I will be able to actually enjoy a session on my layout!


That's what I'd call a full torti. The outer two wires (pins 1 and 8) drive the throwbar. Pins 2, 3, and 4 power-route the DCC signal to the turnout frog. Pins 5 and 6 are fed back to the CMRI to toggle an input line that is read by JMRI to animate the East St. Charles Industries turnout on the dispatcher's screen.



Poor quality image of the new animation of the East St. Charles Industries turnout

email me if you can provide some background info.

There is a scene in Kung Fu, a TV show from the early '70s that goes something like this:

Master Po: Close your eyes. What do you hear?

Young Caine: I hear the water, I hear the birds.

Po: Do you hear your own heartbeat?

Caine: No.

Po: Do you hear the grasshopper which is at your feet?

Caine: Old man, how is it that you hear these things?

Po: Young man, how is it that you do not?

Do you ever marvel at the skills of a master? It may be a musician, or a chef, or a tai chi practitioner. They have refined their art to such an extent that each movement seems to be effortless and so logical. You think, after watching them for a while, that you, too, could step up and play like that, cook like that, do the form like that. Then you make the attempt (if you make the attempt), and you fail. Miserably, completely.

It's not that you don't have potential, not that the desire is lacking, but that you have put in the hours, months, YEARS of practice needed to make such a thing look so simple and effortless.

In high school, I got a guitar for my birthday. It was a very nice guitar, with a beautiful satin finish, and quality components. But there was a problem - the frets buzzed. I was a beginner on the guitar, but every time I played it, the frets made a buzzing sound. Passing the music store one day, I dropped in to talk to the staff.

"How is the new guitar?", they asked.

"It looks great," I replied, "but the frets buzz."

"How odd. Bring it in and we can file down the frets a bit", they said.

A week or so later, my father dropped the guitar off to get the frets filed down. He brought it back to me a few days later, and I took a few strums on the now-fixed guitar, The frets still buzzed.

I was frustrated.

So Dad and I went back to the store, and Dad said, "Look, this guitar has buzzing frets and you said you would fix it, but my son says it's still buzzing."

"How odd," said the sales fellow, a hippie drummer/guitar player that worked there. "Let me give it a try." The hippie took my buzzing guitar and played several minutes of the sweetest guitar music I had ever heard. With nary a buzz the entire time.

It was me, or rather my poor technique, that was causing the guitar to buzz. Red-faced, I grabbed the guitar, thanked the hippie for his time, and followed my dad to the car.

I learned a big lesson that day - If you fail to accomplish a task, it is likely an internal rather than external road block. Don't be too quick to blame external forces, or your tools, for failure to accomplish what you are trying to do.

The masters have practiced, practiced, practiced, correcting their form, making tiny adjustments, slowly, over time, until the result is a beautiful product.

Which brings me to my buddy, Joe.

I'm not sure of his formal title (Savant may be part of it), but he troubleshoots and repairs electronical devices for a living. And not just any electronical devices either; he fixes medical equipment like X-ray machines, and catheter labs, and various other doctor doo-daddery that, you know, KEEPS YOU ALIVE! Not only does he do this for a living, but he is the MAN, the go-to guy, the top dog, the big kahuna or, as they say in the medical business, the SHIZZ.

Oh, and he sometimes helps me on my layout.

Now I need to explain that Joe gets more accomplished on my layout in an hour than I do in a week of puttering. I've watched him in action - he uses the same tools as I do - soldering iron, solder, wire, files, opti-visor, rum. Yet, in his hands, those tools create beautiful things - perfectly shiny solder joints; tight wraps around crisply exposed bus wire; squarely mounted tortimusses with ramrod straight throw rods; and my favorite - finely prepared turnout throw bars, installed with perfect spacing and electrical isolation.

Joe is the Master Po of railroad wiring.

And I know how he does it. I can see him do it. But I can't duplicate it. Joe's efficiency and artistry comes from literally years of practice, every day fixing devices that are infinitely more complicated than anything we have on our layouts. He has developed instinctive troubleshooting procedures that allow hime to observe a situation, diagnose the problem, develop a remedy, and implement the fix. His efficiency is born out of a thousand repetitions of problem-solving, similar to the thousands of hours practicing to become a maestro.

By comparison, my attempts are clumsy. Oh, they will suffice, for a while (unsoldered twisted wire can maintain electrical contact for nearly 20 years…ask me how I know that). If you look under my layout, you can see where Joe has been - the solder joints are cleaner, the wiring layout is straighter, no solid wire in sight.

Joe is Master Po to my grasshopper, Obi Wan Kenobi to my Luke, Gandalf to my Bilbo, Spock to my Kirk, Chen Man Ching to my Ben Lo.

And I will continue to observe, and learn, and marvel, at the work of my very own Master Po - Master Joe.

Tags: friends

Cute, but I can't see where to attach the wires.

Here's what I do when I'm not modeling:


(By the way, that is NOT me doing the form)

I've been fortunate to be involved in a fun and entertaining on my good friend Rick's terrific Friso layout. We are installing hardware




Some of the hardware from RR-CitKits that will be used on Rick's LCC project



The signals have been installed, awaiting wiring


Overview of the wye that comprises the plant to be signaled.


Bret attempts to get the electrons to flow in the proper direction, while he dreams of his next Hawaiian vacation. Rick looks on approvingly, but he is silently thinking of his Rainbow Brite collection

Tags: Work Night, Programming

I recently stumbled on this great site, showing depots of Kansas. Most have been repurposed or abandoned.

Click here to go to the depots of Kansas Site.