2017_03_16 Evans point Install (Indonesian builder)

2017_03_16 Alday all day and Maureen sent over sausage rolls!!  Yummy Thanks Maureen :)

Al picked the back breaking job and paid for it. workaholic!

Fortunately I had already removed the reversing circuitry, even so it took 6 hours to set this piece of track in place and have trains negotiating through the new track.
I continued to back him up by soldering and connecting droppers, as well, I worked in the silo area over Wanganella and sorted out all the wiring there. Just a small job tomorrow connecting the bus lines and trains will be able to circulate once again.
After that connect up both sides of Wodonga Station, before running new track into Albury yard. This of course made possible by Evan (from Indonesia) who built the beaut wide radius double track Y crossover depicted here.
And Evan, it fits well and test trains run through better than Peco NMRA Code 83. Well done, mate.

Pictures

trying to sort out the permanent wiring, here, at the wheat silos..... Ha Ha... sorted, need to shorten and connect all droppers and tie it all up out of the way... Point motors are wired curled on bottom level) just need switches and motor controllers mounted. The 48 Class sits on the first dead section. All power tested working to this point. (actually a diamond crossover Ha Ha) Juicer temp installed outside, will transfer out of sight when wired and working.
 

Evans home made double Y point. was tough to cut it in says Al, but it did fit exactly as we asked Evan. Well done both of you. Evan your point was electrically (and physically) perfect. At the moment it is working "dead frog, but I will connect a juicer over the frogs and make them live frog.

Speed testing on the Bg at least was perfect. Sg works to point of no more rail.

Thanks Al, I enjoyed our day today
Cheers
Rod Young
EDIT
Oh I forgot to thank SDS owner who stopped by to deliver my gas tanks, and VR OT tanks Wednesday on way home to Sydney.
Also Auscision who sent two of my car carrier packs, just two to come now.
And Ian Millard who sent me his two ESU decoders at a reasonable price.

2017_03_14 Trip to Melbourne for Sandown and more work slowly....

2017_03_14  Got home Early Monday morning after heading South on Friday morning. So not much done after Al left. Had a good time meeting old friends and basically did not buy much at all.

Sandown
too much talking :( However I did get a picture of my favorite layout Gordon

Family and good friends

I traveled to Sandown with my friends after we met up at Bundoora.

An interesting side line was learned by us all when I visited my elderly Father, Bob Young who retired from working most of his working life with the Victorian Railways, in 1985.
My friends, Graeme Hawken and Henk Meirs also retired drivers like me.
So we agreed to go out to Narre Warren and surprise Dad with three Drivers something that probably has not happened for many years.
We talked about our times on the job, but somehow we got onto Sandown Race Course.
We learned that Dad's Grand Father and his many brothers came, from Scotland, to Australia chasing gold in the 1850's and in fact made their fortunes in a mine that was taken off them, mainly because it had such higher potential, and they were not cashed up enough to take it further. They took their new found riches and moved to Melbourne, and then on to Dandenong district, where they staked out the maximum land they could. The Government set guide lines and all you had to do was stake it out and improve it.
They each started a new farm, once the Government "negotiated with the Aborigines" I gather this meant, moving them on?
Dad's Uncle Harry (Great Uncle?) fenced off and improved Sandown and actually in the early 1900's built a  horse race track, where horses were trained, and operated it for a few years. Unfortunately the Melbourne "elite" were not happy about this and outlawed the track. So Harry built a dirt car racing track. During the depression the Elites taxed the land and finally took it over. Now it was to become a "proper" race track, eventually a Motor Car track as Harry had envisaged.
My great great grand father was the third family to live in Springvale, and two dog racing tracks finished up on his land.
Another great Uncle ran the Blacksmiths shop in Springvale road, which was there till Rockmans built their departmental store, which is Safeway today

None of this history appears today, as Dandenong, And Springvale council recorded a completely different history involving Councillors, Lawyers and Judges, Newsagents Pharmacists who never did much apart from looking important and ripping off the rate payers.
A very interesting day.

Robert Young 93, Graeme Hawken 71, Myself Rod Young 71 and Henk Meyers 71 also I believe.

A million other jobs, but this one occupied me before I left for Sandown, and this is one I am working with Graeme Schulz to get sceniced. Really nice box!

clean and well planned kit that lends itself to wide or shorter cuttings, simply by reducing the brick wall  lining.

However the instructions are woeful. I have seen "Chinglesh" instructions better written. So I know how the Chinese learned to write instructions? The English taught them?

So this is what I need to do. This US culvert type bridge allows the dirt and ballast to maintain its climb whilst the bridge deck can be flat. (Also helps that I can leave the five ply in place :D

Ok its almost together. I will sink it into the baseboard, allow the road surface to lower itself to gain clearance.
Their are wing walls among the bits in picture several above?  and it should be heavily dusted and weathered and might look ok?

 Cheers
Rod Young

2017_03_09 Hooray!!

2017_03_09 Another Alday and today we sorted our polarity problems and look!! No shorts!!

ok  good news! This is an indication that all is in order. The Digitrax system delivers 13.8 v for HO, and two DCC engines are idling with head lights on, one has sound. Not sure what 0.07 has to do with it all, It seems too low to be reading amps?

Its Thursday and Al and I had a productive day. We fixed the final point which was shorting out the SG in Coal Siding. Actually it wasn't the point it was the frog juicer. Another faulty one, and I suspect damaged by the faulty wiring we have found and fixed. The problem was exasperated because we have spent the last month or two removing temporary wiring and rough track joins and track fixings. Al and I have improved the whole railway, where ever we have worked. But in many cases rewiring has created faults ahead of us in the old wiring. We had a huge win today.

Five minutes before Al was due to head home, I said if their is a short their is a bad connection. Al said he thought one wire was wrong. From my side (the Wodonga station side) I said no its ok.
So we thought it out!  In the main room the black wire is against the wall it runs into the island section on Coal siding side run around to Wodongs. So the black wire is still closest to a wall (in this case the back drop. After traveling right round the central island the DCC bus ends at House Creek Wodonga. Here all tracks are fully insulated and the power feed stops.
the next meter of both tracks is again insulated. This is the reversing section where an electronic device is fitted that automatically realigns the voltage as the train enters to match the reversal without stopping the train. Neat huh?
BG and SG tracks continue into Coal Siding side of room and here is where the short was found. This section needed to have the rails reversed. and I had not done so.
When Al wired the inside rail to black (viewed from his side)
 the short disappeared. And of course that's why you electronically reverse polarities in a reversing loop!  I was really confused, glad Al wasn't.  Its fixed!!

Lets talk pictures:

This one is for Steve Bucton who also has a (much bigger) display case at his home. However I was wondering if he recognized the case?
The case has been perused by many enginemen passing through Wodonga. It was recovered when the Drivers room was stripped during the railway station upgrade. Of course its the Drivers notice board with sliding glass doors.

I was looking for an engine and emptied a storage box that had been stored for a long time, and loaded up the track for one of my viewers who wished my layout had a population on it. ok? what do you think?

Mind you, stuff in storage had suffered a few problems with at least 20 KD couplers which had seized up. A hard grey coating had grown over them, solidifying them.
Also screws were missing and bogies steps ladders were loose in bottom of the box. Another job to do.

This is Al's job. He is removing track and letting me solder joiners to one end with droppers. The original track had none and the joins were shoddy. Looks magnificent now. The droppers are soldered to the track joiner fixing the joiner to the track. This means every section of track has a soldered connection. No mechanical electrical joints here. The only mechanical joints are the "plug in" wiring hanging underneath. This is a cleaner environment, and hopefully the plugs will continue for more years than I have left. The plugs can be changed quickly and easily if the need arises in individual cases.

When I was not soldering  on the droppers, I followed along behind Al,  connecting the droppers to the DCC bus.

From top to bottom. SG cripple, road,No2 SG Passing siding, No 1  SG Main line  and BG Main.
All this track was relaid, rewired and connected to DCC main bus. All very good!!

reconditioned track round corner..

All this upgraded and working just fine. Needs 4 point motors to operate and connect the frogs.

all done all fixed and nice and straight Great job Al 👍😎

Cheers
Rod

2017_03_08 Stop the Press!

2017_03_08  Is it possible?

Pictures of the curve out of Coal siding into Wodonga.
F206 struggles up to Wodonga with the empty tanks which will go back to Spotswood on tonights mixed goods. (my 25 year older version because I cannot find the new ones just now :( )

Well this one is stuck with carpet double sided tape!  Will this be the one? (not the engine fool..the back ground) 👋 This is 5 feet of the 10 foot scene.

F206 lifting 7 empty tanks from Coal Sidings, Shell depot up into Wodonga for the evening mixed goods to Melbourne.

Damn wide angled lenses!  (Ha Ha)

Cheers
Rod
ps  finally got my tooth out. Appears an abscess caused the pain and gave me a lot more grief as my dentist extracted it. I felt great, just a few hours after having it out, so I guess it was poisoning my system to add to my troubles. 

2017_03_07 Catch up post

2017_03_07 
So after an unreported Alday last Thursday, where we sweated over more wiring, and days thereafter working on various projects ......
Some pictures!

Another electrofrog where I forgot to remove the shorting connections before installation. All fixed now, and that completes the refurbished wiring in the coal siding.

This section of track is giving interesting readings though.
These are insulating joiners installed because my return loop electronics were installed on both tracks. I removed them when I moved the electronics to other end of the loop. I have to think this through because as the indicator shows, I still have a reversing problem.
In my mind the separate block to the right and the short (old) reversing section are matched in polarity and should not be doing this. I will have to do another trace with Al on Thursday to see what I have done wrong.

ok almost clean by my standards! Not hard to guess that Mr Schulz and I have been playing around with foam. I was going to keep going, unfortunately though, I broke my hot wire.

access road to Loco depot leads down to Hovel Street crossing. The extra width of the road bed will accommodate fences, telegraph poles and a dirt access road.

If we ever find a way to glue on our back drops, I have a suburban commercial scene for here!

Bulk chux wipes cut and sealed down with 30% white glue.

Ok just playing around to see what we can make this look like.

Cheers

Rod

2017_02_26 I thought it was Sunday?

2017_02_26 You too? well we were wrong it was Alday!!

Al visited again today, as we gradually get all the track circuits up and running. We almost finished Wodonga Coal Siding. We probably could have, but we found another short, an old friend, almost :(
And we ran out of supplies. Seems I accidentally bough home two packets of female joiners instead of the 200 male spades I wanted. Back to Jaycar tomorrow. Mind you we connected over 60 pairs of droppers. That is 120 connectors and 120 spades not including the duds of which their was a few.

The short, was indeed, an electrofrog point with a live frog, and the frog splice joins were left in place. We had a few of these during the wiring upgrade.

I do not allow mechanical electrical joins. All soldered and independently connected. every point blade, point and track section has a dropper. A lot of work but hopefully will give me sterling service, something I have not experienced at Club level till we started doing this at Hobson's Bay in the 90's
Thank  you Al, I could not have done it without you ;)
Ok as it was all wiring today ,only a couple of pictures...

The right hand point and the diamond on the BG did not get finished. Temp wiring removed. Just have to remember how to wire the diamond! Wait a minute I just wasted all that time on the Kilmore East diamond 😓

The last point we wired up today shorted it all out. Here are the tags that we forgot to remove 3 years ago. Obviously this was never connected in till today and we got a dead short.

SG train departs main line , Coal siding for Albury? Well it might once we install Albury 🚂

Cheers
Rod

2017_02_25 Back in a tick.....

2017_02_25  Ok sorry for the long break. Family and disease got in the way.

First of all my elderly Dad went into Hospital and a visit was in order to Melbourne. Whilst there he was sent home and Dad called a family conference to ensure everybody knew his intentions and he wanted to talk about his will.  He seems to be doing all right at this time.

Second thing was about me. After driving down to Melbourne and coming home, I became unwell, and lost interest slept a lot, and could not work in the shed longer than an hour. My patience wore thin, and finally went to Doctor Wednesday last, where I found my Diabetes was out of control.
Had a few good days since then with upgraded medication, am feeling a lot better.

In fact Al came over Friday for an ALDay and I lasted pretty well. Day before I slept the day away.

We laid track, fixed track, and almost finished the wiring under Coal Siding (only 25 droppers to go :O
We also cut away the roadbed behind the trestle bridge to allow for the low back drops that hide the track behind leading to branch station Honeysuckle.
We also played around with Decoder Pro and Loksound Programmer which appears to be running fine on the new laptop. Took 5 weeks to get it working, bloody Windows 10 stuffs everything!

Lets show the pictures.......

Starting with Sunday, helping Graeme Schulz test out his learned skills :D

Added some foam here. Love these hot wires ;) for cutting. Looking at the floor.

Water based liquid nails fixed it very firmly

We decided to cover it with some scrap white board to help with the road, will create a steep bank towards where road needs to go and hopefully some buildings behind that.

Adding to cutting?
Friday

Storing the new Southern Rail cement works in the quarry siding. Its impressive!

SG and BG track fitted along short wall towards Honeysuckle.

The junction at Honeysuckle

The other side showing the BG and SG connection from other side. Also shows why we had to remove the trestle bridge and open up the gap behind where I need to place a low backdrop to hide the track behind the bridge.

And after all this time the ACER now shows Decoder Pro and ESU Programmer. The Fix?
Well I was trying to save space on C Drive. Acer loaded Win10 on a 28gig SSD and so win 10 used 13 gig of it. I added a SD card with 64 gig on it, and loaded JMRI on this card to save my C Drive.
The fix? load it on C Drive, and all works.  28 gig and Windows 10? Come on Acer you got to be kidding!
Cheers
Rod Young