Comtrain goes H0! H0! H0!: August 2020

2020/08/31

2020_08_31 End of month update!

2020_08_31 Still struggling along :D

While faulty wiring is still my nemesis :(

I have spent most of the month replacing wiring and simplifying, as I go. However I still have not found the electrical gremlins that have been confounding me most of this year.

As an example, yesterday I connected in all the top level sections and managed to run trains around for an hour or two. Wow!! I thought, I am getting somewhere. But alas a brass engine derailed and a short occurred. Removed the engine from track and the short just started pulsing.

Damn! the only way to locate the short is to check to see that nothing is bridging insulators (perhaps a loco crept forward?), then disconnect each section till the short is removed. Only thing, is that after a while the short goes away and returns later to haunt me.

I think today, was actually a bit of a turning point. Thanks to some help from some great people on FaceBook group DCC Down under, I started following up a few clues. And I seem to be getting somewhere.

Now here is something else I have found to be a massive mistake I made. Lin Westcott would be very annoyed with me. I always built base boards with L girders

In this picture the L Girder is along the wall. If I had used a smaller front piece of frame and glued it up as another L girder, servicing the wiring underneath would have been even easier. But this system gives easy access to wiring and can be simply finished off with something live this.

So to make it pretty just add a valence when the wiring is proven ok. Even better Velcro or screw it on to make it removable.

For some reason, lost in time, I made box sections and now I pay the piper. Modifying and upgrading wiring is a real pain in the a... neck..

And so those of you who are watching my blog, and about to start building, open frame is your best option,

If you are building a portable layout, then of course the box section deck is the way to go. Because you can simply turn parts of the layout on its side and work easily and neatly on your wiring.

So back to my short shorts!

Cheers

Rod

About my Railway

The Australian National Railways was established by the Whitlam Federal Government following a commitment made in the 1972 election to invite the states to hand over their railway systems to the federal government. In July 1975 Australian National Railways was formed taking over the operations of the federal government owned Commonwealth Railways.

The state governments of South Australia and Tasmania whose railway systems were deeply in debt, accepted. During the next two years discussions between these two states and the federal government resulted in a number of staffing and operating agreements being made that resulted in all South Australian Railways services (except for the Adelaide metropolitan passenger network) and all Tasmanian Government Railways services transferring to Australian National Railway in March 1978, the latter being re-branded AN Tasrail.

At first Victoria declined to hand over its Railways, however a change of Government after Bolte retired meant Victoria could be absorbed into AN as well.
Despite doing everything they could to tarnish ALP leader Clyde Holding, The ALP were able to defeat Hamer who was seen to be just another Bolte, doing more of the same into the future.

Clyde Holding handed over Victorian Railways to the Commonwealth where it prospered as a division of AN retaining its VR colours until later when AN decided to re-brand it as V/Line.

My Railway thus reflects what could have been ;)
And of course National Rail (Pacific National) has no place in my little scenario. Australian National was never privatised and has continually taken East Coast loads off the Highways. As well many branch lines were upgraded and Whitlam's policy of decentralisation actually moved employment to towns with a ready pool of workers, which of course took the pressure of Melbourne which was starting to expand as bush kids moved away from the Country in search of education and employment ( just as Gough Whitlam envisaged it would do)
Rod Young

Comtrain goes H0! H0! H0!

2020/08/31

2020_08_31 End of month update!

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About Me

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