2021_07_13 Just playing trains (video)

 2021_07_13  47 very heavy bogies up the helix (Video)

Still uploading!   A bit slow today.

Cheers

Rod

2021_07_06 New Video

2021_07_06   Services on the Broad Gauge and the Standard Gauge have resumed.

 

Cheers

Rod

2021_6_30 Terra Forming

 2021_06_30 painting and ground work.....

I'm tired :(  so quick and dirty..  LoL

Dirty track? 

Cheers

Rod

2021_06_30 Valences and Diamonds

2021 06 30  Painting the valences and more electrical probs.

First coat of green paint.  Forgot to do this last year... Too much going on, I guess?

The new area looks great too. However its patchy and needs a second coat.

I just discovered another wiring fault.  These three diamond crossings are insulfrogs.   They actually power route and dont require insulating joiners or special wiring. (Unlike the electro frogs I used elsewhere.  :(

The blue (+ve) and orange (-ve) wire into BG circuit. The green (+ve) and yellow (-ve)  wire into SG circuits ...  another cross feed discovered! 

The other code 75 diamonds were electrofrogs and need to be wired differently. and they look much better as well.

Cheers

Rod

2021_06_25 More scenery!

 2021_06_25 Graeme adds to the scenery.

As to the wiring?   Its still ongoing but I am working it out and the finish is in sight :)

Cheers

Rod

2021_06_13 New Video

 2021_06_13 We finally beat out problems at Wodonga Station :D

You can go full page view!

Looks like we need to rewire the top level next :(

Still need to install yard point motors and connect up the yard. But that will be easy compared with what we have just gone through.

Cheers

Rod

2021_06_05 May update (late again)

 2021_06_05  A little bit of this and a lot of that again :(

Al wasn't here today, however Graeme and I did feel his presence as we munched on his supplied sausage rolls. Thanks Al :D

So Graeme was thinking about the branch line scenery.

Styrofoam carved with a hot wire is covered with paper towels, and the rail line is moved to allow room for the new lever frame, which will recess into area in front of the turn table.

The hills and cutting start to come together.

Meanwhile I bit the bullet and attacked the wiring at Wodonga and towards the Wodonga SG loop.

The new plan was to disconnect all the droppers and cut out the bus lines and install new bus feeds. Under here we had a spider web of 6 bus lines serving no real purpose. Now I am installing just two bus lines. One for BG and other for SG. This will allow me to set up a second command station (booster) supplies 8 amps to each system. A third bus will be installed for the Branch Line. Now surely 24 amps is overkill?  However I use a lot of Tam Valley and other DCC gear. We will see.

After cutting out the old bus lines, I threaded the first two bus wires into Wodonga and attached the BG droppers to it.

In the meantime, Graeme was hard at work, developing his scenery. This section will be filled with plaster and covered in sculpture mould and then hand formed into a rock wall (I think?)

Had to move the rail line in towards the T/T to allow the new lever frame to recess into board and not be as intrusive as the old frame is today.

A little further on.

Its a 2% grade on a curve, and its a nice cutting, I think.

Well still plodding on, and we have seen progress in the last month. Thank goodness.

The wiring is finally starting to move forward, and we are able to run trains once more.

Cheers

Rod

2021_05_05 Is this a "eureka" moment?

2021_05_05  After months of failures electrically, is it possible that I have found the fault? 

My rather unique wiring design may have actually become unraveled those many months ago, when I decided to replace my stop lamp circuit protectors with NCE  EB1 circuit breakers.  And looking back over this blog, the timing is about right.

And so today I am going to attempt to fix  those circuit breakers by separating and isolating the whole BG system from the SG system.

The idea is to run two 8 amp Digitrax controllers  by adding a booster (again) The booster will run the entire SG system after I disconnect it from the first command station.

Some pictures.

After separating the BG track from the common black (-ve) track circuits, I had run a new bus to this board. As you can see the main power bus arrives at the top and divides into 4 circuit breakers. So BG and SG circuits share a common feed. Each pair of EB1 breakers controls a track section which consists of one or more BG tracks and one or more SG tracks In this case the top two EB 1's run the entire Coal Siding and the bottom two run the double track main between the Coal siding and Wodonga.

I was thinking this last section was two short to have its own circuit breakers and I was about to add Wodonga into this circuit, when I noticed that the black (-ve) was actually not protected from a short, and in fact was reintroducing the common black (-ve)  to the system.

The back of the board shows the electronics on top and through connection on the bottom. 

The through connections marked with black dots are directly connected together thus bypassing the circuit protection.

And so it all starts again!  Obviously I have little electronics training, and just learnt enough to be dangerous.

Cheers

Rod