2019_11_11 Lest we forget.
I have been asked several times why I am fooling around with wiring?
Well blame Tony K and his signals and for some reason, I am listening to him, now, when many other times I used to say that I have gone too far along this path to change now!
What happened?
Well I guess I discovered that my biggest frustration is fixing problems again and again and.....
My answer to one friend went like this
"I have 12 sound projects on the bench, however I am flat out (literally on the floor) altering my wiring system.
I originally ran a continuous DCC bus around the whole railroad. I did wonder how several boosters actually worked together, but I thought that is how the DCC bible was telling me to do it. I only had one 25 amp Digitrax transformer, after all.
I am now cutting this up into 5 direct districts with command station protection, and have 20 NCE EB1 circuit breakers that will further break it all up into 10 BG and 10 SG sub districts.
As I use automotive spades as my connectors, it means pulling this out and transferring the automotive female connectors from the main bus to sub district bus' already installed, but not properly utilised.
Its taking time, but it is not that bad. Paul Hawden (ex Buffer Stop) will be pleased that all the headlamp globes originally used for circuit protection are gradually being reassigned to other (landfill) duties ;)"
And so until today I have disconnected the whole DCC Bus and cut the main bus into sections.
as shown in earlier posts I very recently set up NCE EB1 boards connected to this main bus and fed protected power via the EB1's into each sub district.
I tested the branch line first, and found Honeysuckle to the branch terminal station to be connected properly, very clean and protected by an EB1.
Bullarto to Allannvale needs a separate bus feed as well as several point motors and its own EB1.
That will be a two person job, for later on.
So I moved to Wodonga Coal sidings, as you can see from last post. This was time consuming and I have transferred almost every connection to the local BG and SG bus'
I am about half way done, but I had to take a spell from crawling around on the floor, as it was taking a lot out of me.
So I transferred my attentions to the upper level working on the tracks from the top of the Helix back to Allanvale where two EB1 circuit breakers were installed and a heap of wire removed as surplus to needs. However we had three local bus' already installed. I simply transferred the automotive connectors to their correct wires and finished this job in a few hours. Much easier standing or sitting up.
My future can go two ways. Get back on the floor and finish off the coal siding, or finish off the old helix and that's more attractive as I still have not recovered from last two weeks.
Today I plugged back in the 5 DCC districts, and having only transferred wires to sub districts and cutting the thru DCC bus apart, I already had a pleasant surprise.
The DCC alarms were noticeable, but only because they were silent. Well every now and then a three beep signal announced a loco had been purged from the system.
So apparently I have already found and fixed the problem? No idea what it was but am happy its gone (5 hours later still no warnings from Command station :D )
So that is happy news and for the first time I found nothing to photograph :)
Cheers
Rod
