2021_03_14 Track Work

 2021_03_14  Running repairs, and a good pussy!

And starting with the cat. She snook in a night or two back and when I opened the door in the morning, actually thanked me for letting her out.  (My HERO!!) unexpected that.

Of course I was worried about what I would find. However apart from a few wagons derailed, no real damage.

I found a puddle and cleaned that up, but then found how she was trying to get herself out. She was going to dig herself out Ha Ha. Probably saved the trains by keeping her occupied.

She had been on the desk, trying to reach the window, I see.

Tried to install some point levers, finished up fixing up a double slip :(

The throw bar broke and was replaced with some circuit board.

And then I found a dead spot between House Creek and Wodonga Station.  The problem was that I had not attached droppers, and relied on mechanical connections. Ah well, it will be fixed, and whilst I am at it, I will increase the length of the reversing section all the way to the points at Wodonga. Will now hold 50 bogies on the SG and about 45 on the BG,

Have been running trains on the layout for over a week. And that's really good news for us. Its been a long time coming. The reversing loop here at Wodonga was preventing long trains from running. And several other places have bad connections. Some points need juicers or connections to the live frogs.

But things are looking very good at the moment. Now we can start on the scenery. :D

Cheers

Rod

2021_03_07 More point motors! plus Taiwan to Aus in 10 days!

 2021_03_07  Thursday workday with Al and Saturday with Graeme and Al

On Thursday Al came over to help with wiring and point motors. Its just too hard for me to work under the layout doing wiring or installing motors, and to constantly get up off my back, to locate the wiring, or to see if the points are working correctly, before I screw them home in their best position.

In a few days, Al's son is coming to visit and we decided to have an extra work day on Saturday, to see if we could get a train to run the whole layout. We needed to find one persistent short I introduced fixing other problems.

It seems like it worked, and I am about to spend today tidying up and testing everything. The good news is that so far this morning, I have placed sound locos around the layout drawing about 3.0 amps and the Digitrax system has stayed up for over two hours (the fault was shutting us down within 3 mins!)

Also on Saturday, Graeme came across to design some scenery and fascia, around the top of the helix, where the escape road points and connection to the top level SG track was recently finished.

ok some pictures should tell the story.

At this stage, we had run out of ANE point motors, and so I raided the Tortoise stack, which was reserved for semaphore signal and lever frame work being done by Tony McKenzie under a signalling contract.

Al finally got a sit down job, whilst I was underneath stringing the wires to the control panel and attaching the motors.

And after that the "postie" arrived with my new order of ANE point motors. How about that!  less than 14 days and I ordered them on a weekend to boot :) They are an upgraded version, but mechanically the same. Now all I got to do,is put them all together

And so when we vacated the corner, Graeme moved in to install some new facia and prepare the branchline for scenery...   woohoo!

I guess the outriggers are in position.

The fascia is leveled up and tacked in. Found some tunnel mouths.

And finally!!  a lot of ugliness is covered up!!   

 This is where McKenzie will fit a lever frame. Which will replace the existing one at Honeysuckle.

Helps introduce some contours and slightly widens the area. I can see a road here now :)

Cheers

Rod

2021_03_01 Point Motors and Switching!

 2021_03_01 Points and switches

Last Thursday Al and I spent the day fitting DCC Concepts point motors and wiring them to a proposed signal panel. and Saturday and Sunday after buying the DPDT switches from "Jaycar", I started wiring them up.

The point motors have two SPDT switches built in, one of which will be used to set polarity of the frogs, and the other will be used to operate signals in the future. 

One drawback I have found (actually two) is that you cannot center the action without power. Thus the 9v battery in the picture. Connecting cables is easy. Simply push the wire in after depressing a button.

Unfortunately, I have had 12 of these  devices in storage for about 12 years. Of the 12, only 8 actually worked. I had to reheat all the solder tabs seen in the picture and after a few wasted hours I managed to get two of them working and two needed to be binned.

I found some picture frames at reject shop. I removed backing and glass, and cut out a perspex panel, to replace glass. At $5 it saved a lot of work.

Jaycar supplied the DPDT switches at $3.75 less trade discount.

I tried to draw out a representation of the area controlled by the motors.  This was drawn on the protecting paper fixed to the perspex.

The switches were fitted into the perspex where marked. Down being straight road and up being diverge.

Panel was screwed into side of layout. Not sure if that was a good idea, but I strengthened the frame with solid angle brackets, seen above

12v Positive and Negative connections all soldered in and connected, with heavier feeds for power connection. Now all I got to do is make it look neat :(

To drill out the perspex, I needed to find a way to drill out the holes without chipping the perspex. So I went to Duck Duck Go, my new favorite search engine. They suggested using the drill  fitted into the Ryobi, and lubricated with soap, which is in the onion bottle :) And every hole was clean, and not one of them cracked the perspex. WOO HOO!!

All the cables running from the point motors arrived behind the panel, were numbered to match the numbers on the panels, and the connections were made.

All I have to do now is connect in the crossovers. That is two point motors need to be operated from one switch, to cross trains through. Need to work out which wire connects where? I suspect the wires will cross to the second motor.

When the panel is tested and working, I will mark out the underside of the perspex and line the track diagram with white tape. Then paint the back of the panel black. This should look the part :)

Then tidy up the wires....

Cheers

Rod