Decided to continue testing and found the three way point at Benalta was dead in one direction. not surprising as i went underneath I found some of the wires were hanging loose. I had forgotten to join them in.
Three hours later I had trains running through without a glitch. And as I could not remember the wire colours nor find the written plan, I had to remove the point, check wiring and replace it. Thus a lot of lost time. In the finish I had a short on the first frog nearest the single track entry. Of course I checked the frog juicer last, after unhooking the wires and putting them back one at a time to find which one shorted. However none did, and finally I changed the frog juicer to no avail. Trying to locate which frog was connected to the juicer pins I disconnected the one I was pretty sure operated the close frog. Tried a train hoping not to have a short, just a dead spot. What I got was a fully operational three way point all tracks, all ways, no voltage drops, all works just fine and the frog is disconnected..dead frog?? Should run the F Class through and see if that is the case. Not sure how I can make it live though :(
So after all that I was setting up a few trains and started circulating the tracks that I could, and I was finding certain trains deraled all over the place.
Now the locomotives were just fine. So were the new SDS flour pots, but my brass LL's and MM's were jumping randomly.
I fixed these by reducing the center pivot springs a couple of turns, allowing free movement of the bogies. Back on the train. Now the SAR cattle trucks were randomly derailing. Checked them out and found almost every axle out of gauge. I could see a gap between the axle step and wheel, but unfortunately, I could not close it up even in the vice with holes in wood for the needle points. Finished up replacing all wheels with kadee wheels which appear to have same axle length.
So next was the Orient billboard vans. They wobbled around like cheap Safeway toys! Ugh!! Anyway they fit the bogies to moulded posts which prevents you from tightening the screw to stop the wobbles. So out with the file, and reduced height of posts. Tightened the screw, and backed it off slightly, to allow pivoting and still retain a small three point suspension. they run better now and the wobble is much reduced. What is with our South Australian brothers. Should not have to spend money on new wheels and work on these things. Don't they test them first before production run starts?
Just as I came inside the reverse loop into the center island on the top level was found not to be working. A job for tomorrow!
Ignore the wheel set on left I was checking out another wheel to see if I could replace axles.The lower wheel on the right was pressed in a vice with two pieces of wood to protect the needle points. It would not squeeze up, it just bent the axle instead. You can see the gap is still there on the right.
Blurred :( but the gap is on the bottom of axle...
Got Got two out of first 8 axles into gauge Broke 4 and replaced the lot with kadee's :(
Cheers
Rod
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