2020_05_04 How to waste time!

2020_05_04  a seconds distraction can cause a pulled wire that takes two days to fix :(

And so. Behind this scenic block, I had a pair of points (switch).

It lived here, and note the point actuator has been cut to just hold the throw bar and not interfere with passing trains.

The dropper had to be disconnected from a bus no longer related to that circuit. , and when I  used pliers to pull it free from the connector,  I slipped and pulled the wire off the point.
Could not fix that without removing the point.  It took a millisecond to pull the wire and two days to try and fix it.

Ok point is back in with new wires fixed firmly in place. About 30 minutes work, this far.
However no matter what I did, I could not get the throw wire through the throw bar. And on my own, I just had to remove the point motor, mount a new longer wire and lay on my back underneath to try and feed the wire through the throw bar. Even with a light on top, I had a lot of trouble finding the hole in the throw bar.. damn!!
Finally I walked away and went inside. Gave up for the day.

Next day I tried again. This time I cleaned out the hole in the baseboard and re-positioned the light on top, and after bending myself underneath again, and trying about 20 times to push the throw wire through and using double sided tape to hold the tortoise in place. Then getting out and looking at the point to find that I had missed again....
I finally decided to remove the point, again and relay it after placing the wire through the throw bar. You of course realize I am standing on a stool, looking over the  scenic block and I have 4 insulated joiners on the point to feed into place all together??  Ok so you know, why I don't want to do this.

So I re-positioned the light and used a board and a cushion to save my back, and finally got a better view and got the damn wire through the throw bar. And as well the double sided tape still held after pulling it free once or twice to align the tortoise with the existing holes drilled. I screwed it in.

Great stuff ! So I connected up all the wires and tested the point motor!   Look at the picture!!  Its hard to see but that is smoke blurring the shot...

Goodness gracious me!!   This is the first time I have ever turned good wire into smoke. (at least on this layout, hmm I do remember wiring up a box trailer a few years back)
What I have done is beyond my comprehension. No idea what I did wrong. Just hope the damage is local :(

It is the point power supply that has shorted out (12v at 25 amps)  It feeds from the main DCC transformer and I might change this now. I probably could run it on a 2.5 amp plug pack? It does not have a fuse and the power supply did not trip.

It appears to have reached that joiner and not gone further?

So two days of work and still not fixed. In fact I am digging a bit of a hole here, for myself :(
The smoke should have cleared by now, and so time to go and see what I did wrong, and how to fix this new stuff up... sih!!
Hope the filters in air conditioner do not hold the plastic stink too long

Cheers
Rod

2020_04_30 Slow and Dark is how it goes :(

 2020_04_30 Opposite to what "he" says it was light to Dark here last night

https://www.facebook.com/comtrain1945/videos/10221057680327792/

Cheers
Rod

2020_04_29 Gosh first case on Hobsons Bay Nth!

2020_04_29 Station Master contracts covid 19

OK just showing you the IDR W Class,
This little beauty was co-opted to run a special goods from Bullioh to Honeysuckle and thought you may like to see it.
Unfortunately several inhabitants were caught falling over and the suspect was immediatly reported as Covid 19

Cheers
Rod

2020_04_27 Separation!!

2020_04_27 about 10 hours work later....

Well its good news, because after moving almost every connection to its correct bus line, I have separated the two circuits, and the shorts have disappeared.The Allanvale section is completely isolated from the old helix. Yeiiii!!
To get this happening I had to ensure all 7 Tortoise motors were power feeding from the BG circuits. Everyone was red wired to the BG bus but black wired to the SG bus...fixed.
The diamond crossover was part of the BG system but was wired as a SG section, and so I changed the droppers to BG bus, and found some of the BG points were connected fully or partly to the SG system... Fixed.

It has taken me all this time to reach the stone quarry track work, and so I will continue on to the helix and fix any other problems, or even just tidy up the wiring.
That means the difficult part, left,  will be the wheat silo and new station yard.
I am also fixing the point motor switches and gluing in the mountings which were only loosely fitted.

So having a break after 3 hours of solid work, and back into it after lunch

And so if the mess is an indication of the works carried out?  It sure is a mess :D

Cheers
Rod

2020_04_25 Anzac Day was so quiet.

2020_04_25 Lock Down Anzac Day.

This morning I awoke early and went outside after I heard an unusual aircraft. Did not see it, but apparently a second wold war warplane and a RAAF chopper circled Albury Wodonga. Ths was the only sign that today was special.

THE RAILWAY

In the last few days I first tested the new wiring installed on the old helix.

I did this by disconnecting every DCC track section along the whole railway. I then found the positive and negative feeds for the old helix.
I needed to find a way to isolate and test, to prove that no shorts were present. And so I set up a new command station and plugged the helix into it.

The helix itself was wired up so that the top level was insulated from the rest.
The main power feed to the helix started from the BG station andthe SG from the crossover. This stopped at the top of the helix for BG and the loop points on the SG. It bypassed the reversing sections and continued through the newly installed wires along level 2 to 5 ending at the first points into Wanganella. A new feed will service the area behind.
The reversing section was fed from this same DCC circuit, however each pair of wires fed through a hex juicer rigged to operate as 3 isolated reversers.

Before all this could be completed I needed to hot glue the new feeders to the edge of the helix road bed. droppers were added by shaving the insulation and soldering them directly to the correct DCC bus wires glued along side the track.

Now the BG helix wiring works perfectly., apart from a minor imperfection at  the insulated piece I cut in at the top of helix. An easy fix.. tests at DCC voltage 14.7 AC
However the SG helix tracks have failed, and it all appears to be caused by crossed wires in the next DCC section heading towards Allanvale. they test at DCC voltage 2.9AC.
As well the first BG train reached the top and passed over the insulators and powered through the section to Allanvale. Almost certainly the same crossed wire problem stopping the SG

My normal hodge podge of wiring which was mainly caused by adding and adding over time is very difficult to trouble shoot.  Easy way out originally is still biting me

And so starting here, I worked back to towards the old helix removing wiring and sorting out the two DCC bus lines white and black were tied together and were SG feeds.
Grey and black tied together to represent the BG feeds.

When I was using a common black feed for SG and BG, I found it caused problems and so I added extra black feeds requiring separation.  So far I have found many BG black feeds still connected to the old common feed (now SG feed)
I have also found BG reds connected to SG feeds etc etc.
The fix is to separate all wires that need it and move wires to correct DCC bus lines. Not finished yet, but hopefully this will get the system working properly.
The big gain is that as I finish the first renewed section (the old helix)  I have also completely rewired the next Allanvale section. So slower than I would like, but moving right along.

A note on Albury reversing sections.
I  seem to have proved my misunderstanding of reversing loops :)
Most times a reversing loop is formed by a single line dividing into a baloon loop at a pair of points (switch) allowing the train to travel around a loop and reenter the same single line.

And so if the left rail of the single line was a black connecion it would be the outside rail of the loop. This means when the track reached the points the black wire would connect to the right rail of the single lie, which is of course a red wire rail.

This would be a short and we can fix this by switching the loop from an arrival configuration  to match the departure configuration. I use Tam valley juicers, or the switches on Tortoise machines.

In my case on this large layout, I have decided to just reverse a section of track long enough to carry my longest train.  I believe my failure to make this work at Albury is that I have two separate DCC bus lines . One at Albury and other at Coal Sidings.  I ran a separate section through the reverser.
At first I disconected that and fed the Albury bus into the reversers. This allowed trains to arrive and depart Albury. However they all shorted out at Coal Siding and had to be pushed over the gap.

I need to add one section to one side to mimic what I have done at the old helix.  And so I am going to run the reversers here on the coal siding DCC bus by extending a short section of this bus into Albury. This will hopefully be the fix, I have been searching for all these months.
Ha Ha clear as mud, I expect
Cheers
Rod  

2020_04_20 April Update

2020_04_20 One job leads to another and another ...........

Well I guess I miss my mates and family, however the lock down has not affected me that much.


My time is split between cleaning up the place, sorting out model railway storage (and finally after years of hoarding, I have filled another skip as I slowly sort through 40 years of collecting.
Its amazing how time cures the collecting bug.  Things treated like gold, over time head for the bins :(

I had a box of PMG relays and switches.. Had is the new operative word. I box of Infocom which was the logic operation system that came after Zero 1  and before NMRA DCC.. had...  but binned..
And finally all my magazines are gone. Doubt if I ever opened more than a few over all these years!

Rolls of single  PMG cable (single conductor) and heaps of old electronics, transformers etc etc. I will never ever use, so out they went.

Cant see much difference, apart from clearing the open floor.

So finally spending a few hours each day, I have replaced a heap of old wiring and started work on the old helix.

In between times I have lined up all the DC locos that need sound, and started installing the decoders, which I purchased each time I bought a loco (I hate to think what value of stuff has been put away for many years.
 I did take a few pictures though.    Lets see if any are able to tell the story?

And so the helix forms another reversing loop, that is three of them.
The power van supplied 415 volts to the gang and tested out the rail joints and solder joints as we went.

 And so I cut the whole top level out of the section using insulators which I started doing a few weeks back.

 The new cable ran back to the Tam Valley Hex Juicer which is rated at 3 amps per reversing section. (I think, and we will wait and see, as their could be 6 engines with sound operating via the Juicer at any time)

The helix will be covered to take it out of the view and a curved back drop will hide the wiring and electronics.

 I suppose most of you know what a juicer looks like, and so this out of focus shot could have been left out?  Anyway this checks frog polarity of 6 points. Or you can use jumpers to pair up 1 and 2 leaving 4 frog juicers spare, or pair up all and create 3 polarity reversers, which is what I have done here

 On my first test, the loco stopped to the right, where I had forgotten about the insulators I added years ago.

 Here I continue to tidy up the feeds. This is overkill, however ask Al, I tend to overkill everything.
Anyway, I ran the 4 wire feeds around the helix, fixing it in place with hot glue. Then connected the feeds to the bottom half of the helix.I separated BG from SG letting the two SG tracks share a feed.
However I did feed all three tracks with 6 wires creating separate reversers.

The train continued on to the bottom points where I discovered a loss of power again.
Must have left a feed out? So that's next job, after lunch, I guess?

 This is the first train to ever use the SG part of the helix. Up till now I only operated on the BG.
The train operated ok, with just a few rough spots. Wont take Al long to sort them out after the pandemic is sorted Ha Ha!

I still have to glue in two levels of wiring add add another 40 pairs of droppers to eliminate the mechanical power routing via the fish plates.
It never ends, however all the droppers are "almost" in place. Just need to shorten them and relocate them to the inside of the helix, by passing them under the tracks.

The SG is still incomplete, requiring the top level feed to run down the new helix and into Albury

Then we can  knock in the golden spike. All I need to do is find a nugget. After all I do live in Yackandandah and the Chinese already mined my land (for five years) So hoping they might have left me some :D

Cheers
Rod

2020_03_29 Playing with lighting

2020_03_29  Graeme helped me fit more lighting

As before, we used 3M backing to secure strips of Led's to aluminium angle. The angle was very short on one side which tilted the throw of light about 15 deg.
The 3M from China is not reliable, so we secured the strips with hot glue, every foot or so.
Be careful not to heat up the leds, because they are constructed with low melt solder and hot glue can "unglue" them from strip. Ask me how I know?

A Jaycar hot glue gun using 11mm glue sticks was a great improvement on the cheap reject type I was using.

 

 Join the strips together, and as I needed 10 m of strips we added the power to the middle where we joined the strips together

 With dimmers installed, I can vary the light to simulate early morning, midday or afternoon.

NOTE  BLOGGER had a fit and lost the pictures (about a week after posting)
I have added those I could find and lumped the rest together.

 

*Both strips on full output.

*both full on.

*Just the warm white on full.

*Full on warm white. Early morning?

 *Just room lighting
.

*Just full white.

*Again full white.

*Both strips full on. The warm white softens it just enough, I think.

*Again same as above.

Thanks  Graeme, glad to see a friend, and I guess after tonight, that will be the end of visits, till we find out what really is happening  in this strange world of ours.
Thankfully, I have plenty to keep me occupied. AS I hope you all do too. Stay healthy my friends.
Cheers
Rod

2020_03_21 Track to light

2020_03_21  Darkness to light!!  Thanks Q

We just keep plodding along

Graeme  called in for an hour or four and we got the Albury side lighting working. It's  dark outside, and the interior lights off.

You can see the clamped on fascia?  This will be full height and cover the lights and the timber frame. Painted green to match other fascia. It does not stop the light reaching edge of layout and yet the control panels will be clear of light and reflections when installed.

 Interior light on

And now the layout lights are off.

Track works

 (sorry about fuzzy pic)

 Still trying to sort out the helix and of course I need to install another reversing loop. This is mainly to keep the negative wire towards the wall. This started off because I used 45amp bus wires because I thought I had to run a continuous bus line. Knowing better now, however I maintain this restriction, because I am not prepared to completely change all the previous wiring and disconnect and reconnect those thousand odd droppers once more.  The cause of all of this was I could not get 45amp matching black bus wires (at a price I could afford. Two hundred meters of copper cable was $60 and one hundred meters of black aluminum (could not get copper then) was $190. So I spaced the bus a foot apart. The red wire nearest wall was a black wire and the reversing sections allowed this to be maintained... stupid... stupid...... stupid!! Anyway its all spilt milk, or water long under the bridge.

 AlDay

  Al day Thursday :)

 We added the last track to the coal siding (At least Al did)

But first,
 Although Albury has only one crossover allowing the XPT to move from platform road to the main, we found the reversing loops were sending freight trains back along the platform. And so we added a second crossover to pass them through the through road. 

 At the coal siding we need to add the second arrival road and runaround.  And that completes the BG track on the whole layout...Yippeee!!!!

Well perhaps just a little more so I can fit the cement and Super Industries in place.

So a little more progress, hope you all enjoyed.
Edit
Spent two days rewiring the top level from top of the old helix to Allanvale and around the Peninsular via Bullarto and Trentham to Honeysuckle.
And now my Digitrax system refuses to start up, and I have no idea what changes I made to cause the fault. I only found out after those two days when I tried to start it up and run a train or two.
Next week will be a difficult one.
Cheers
Rod

2020_03_10 Two Exhibitions this weekend. Video about IDR W

 2020_03_10 Slow times with many interruptions


 Hi All
Not much to report, as I had to head to Melbourne account a family illness and various other interruptions.

The German designed Diesel hydraulic Class W
This rebuilt version lost its Mercedes motor for a GM. Lifted body mods including a new exhaust.

 In real life it was a useful VR engine, however the fitters and especially the drivers thought they were crap. They worked for a long time and as depicted even got rebuilt.

 Doing what they were built for! Shunting.

 In both guises they were able to shift loads between yards and deal with the job at hand.

 Spartan inside with seats added as what would seem an afterthought.

 10 hoppers and that's a short 1% grade its climbing easily.

 In olden times it would move a lot of tons between Brooklyn and Tottenham. and Sunshine Grain silos. And take a load home to North Melbourne when the job was done.

This is a magnificent model. IDR a small manufacturer has lifted the bar and now we can hope the others will take notice!
In this picture the capacitor is holding the lights on, even 30 secs after turning power off. With sound turned on, it still stays alive for several seconds and that's a great reason for all manufacturers to include "stay alives" on their lighting boards,

Video is here (Double click)
IDR release the VR W Class

Cheers
Rod