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