So we moved it to Friday and it extended into Saturday!
Friday became a bit of a catch up day, working on an Auscision Walker Rail Motor and playing with Al's B Class and plain catching up after Al,s trip up north. And of cause sausage rolls!
Saturday Graeme arrived to work on his scenery project and Al continued to fix the track up in Trentham.
I struggled with my revers loop sections (still) Cant work out why reconstructing the track sections as instructed by Tam Valley has not fixed the problem.......
Some pictures...
Auscision B Class showing the metal grill warping. Its only glued on and this system, just does not work. Removing grills can cause problems. Paint sticks and chunks can pull off with grills. Many folk just super glue them back on, pushing them back into place. However I have seen many glue stains. So how to do it so it looks ok?
Decided to use a knife blade...
Ran a bead of glue along edge of blade.
and dragged blade back, depositing glue on inside of screen. Then pressed a strip of wood up against grill for a few minutes till glue dried. Sparce application of glue helped not to squeeze glue outside mesh and foul the job.
Its not perfect, however it looks better now.
My biggest head aches are caused by here and here...
The island reverse loop which just will not work for me. Despite following instructions, I cannot get the dual frog juicers to operate as advertised.
All wired up and track connected. However electrically, not working... still!!
The second area of problems, is Trentham yard, and Al came to my rescue here on Sunday starting to put it all together for me.
What happens when you get a short that does not trip the command station?
A Locomotive was slowly moving in notch 1 out of sight. The loco shorted out, tripping the command station. The circuit reset and held, slowly heating up the loco/, and when I tried to move it later, it was seized up. Put it aside and after Al left I pulled it down to see what was the problem.
Axle and gears all melted (welded?) in place.
You can see the bronze bush has fallen into space between metal frame and is touching wheel creating the short.
I have spare flex coil bogies. Unfortunately, this is a welded plate bogie, which I do not have any of. So I am hoping Trainorama might have a spare? The flex coil I have is an Austrains X which I thought was interchangeable. It almost is, except the locating hole in the chassis is smaller than the pin in the bogie, making loco sit 3 mils higher than it should. I can drill it out, but not till I see if I can find a welded plate version.
The keeper plate is destroyed, although the side frame is ok. So maybe I can interchange it with a Trainorama Flexcoil if I can get one of those?
Please note. I am in no way blaming the fine folk at Trainorama for this "accident" One of the main reasons I am working so hard on my rewire project is to stop things like this from happening.
Should you use tail lamp globes for circuit protection? Well you be the judge. I have now lost three engines like this, and I am replacing globes as quickly as I can afford to.
Graeme's mountain is spreading South!
The cutting is formed up from Wodonga and over House Creek.
More work at House Creek.
Uncle Ben's or Kelly Street end. Need to mark out the crossing here.
Near the Stock Race towards South Street and the head shunt.
And that's a real step forward. My job is to glue the towels all over it, now to form a touch base for the ground cover. Just noticed I have forgotten to prepare Kelly Street crossing. Must check that out.
Al has graciously taken on Trentham. He can be made to cast a few oaths, standing on his stool, and dealing with the problems of laying Shinohara or Micro Engineering code 70 track. Ash him if its is correctly called "flexy track" Ha Ha!
Thats better. We will remove this new track and treat the surface of the caneite with the same gap filla we used at Bullarto, to give track a base and allow the nails to hold the track down securely. Have to try and do that before Thursday.
Al tried to save the original track along the platform, however the hand made point was too brittle and came apart. So he cleaned it all back, and he can fit a new point and track in next time.
He lays nice track, and it works very well. Thanks mate :D
Cheers
Rod
