2017_01_19 Wiring blues, and red and black and.....its another ALDAY.

2017_01_19 So despite lots of things getting in the way!

Today was a day put aside to wire the Coal Sidings. Ok trains had been running? so a couple of hours and it would all be working?

Yeah right!  First thing was to power up the DCC bus then disconnect all other districts.  All good :)
Check loom to see if it was all in place? all looks fine.
Test DCC main...  All fine......  Connect BG and SG districts via fused local bus (using common black DCC bus to return.    oops a short. Disconnect local bus. Short goes away.
OK using the floor trolley, I disconnect every dropper from BG and SG local bus. The wires are  clean tied off at each end and still we got shorts. Spent two full hours trying to find what is wrong? Where is the connection that must be there and yet we cannot see it?
We remove track, and insert insulators to guarantee reverse loop is not interfering with bus.
Finally we isolate it to SG.  We disconnect it and short on BG disappears! OK check points and crossovers?? Nothing obvious, however I am thinking of the Kilmore East quarry fiasco. Might have to lift diamond to see if the bridge connections have been removed. Notice code 75 / 100 converters are being used as insulators here as well.

So we continued down linking every black wire to the black bus, found two track sections had red wire and black wire transposed. Damn. I put shrink tube black and red sheaths on each cable, to remind me what I have done in the future. Too much work to get up off my back on the floor and un-solder each wire. We have been here all day as well.

We turned it into a two man job, simply because laying on the trolley, I was taking so much time looking for tools and getting up to find cut,  wire etc etc.  I am sure Al was disappointed, because we did not get anywhere near finishing this job. But I can think of no way I would have got this far without him on his feet and passing me stuff as was needed. Now short has been isolated, we should go like a house on fire in a stiff breeze.
Some pictures!

So look at the blue back board?  The track closest to back is the BG main to Albury from Wodonga.
About the middle you might just see the loop for the BP oil siding?
We finally got this little bit of track wired in and working, and yes we were disappointed. :(
We did replace some wonky track two small lengths with one full length of track, insulate the reverse loop on SG and connect the track juicers that reverse polarity in tandem if a train enters from a direction reversed and tested them as working.

And T375 actually does get to home protecting the BG / SG Southern entry to Coal Sidings.
 have connected points to bus, just need to add juicers to switch frog polarity of points as needed.
And here is the Diamond that might be shorting out the BG track. Photo shows it wonky this end too. So fixing the diamond may have other value as well.

Laying on the trolley, on the floor is not that great. After an hour there, I almost need help standing up. Back and chest quickly get better as I move around.

 All black wires tied and connected. Should not be a big job to connect red droppers to correct mini bus, if the short can be eliminated on the SG.

The tail lamp globes should be removed, and probably will be. They actually come on very bright when a short occurs, then fade to the lowest wattage as the stop light switches off with a solid state switch built in.  The light warns of circuit shorted out. All of these globes are fed into an NCE circuit breaker. The globes actually stop the circuit breaker from opening. I am thinking the circuit breaker can do the job better on its own.

 There are  long red , black and Green wires running under here. No idea why?? So all remain disconnected ;)

Cheers
Rod