Well I guess I miss my mates and family, however the lock down has not affected me that much.
My time is split between cleaning up the place, sorting out model railway storage (and finally after years of hoarding, I have filled another skip as I slowly sort through 40 years of collecting.
Its amazing how time cures the collecting bug. Things treated like gold, over time head for the bins :(
I had a box of PMG relays and switches.. Had is the new operative word. I box of Infocom which was the logic operation system that came after Zero 1 and before NMRA DCC.. had... but binned..
And finally all my magazines are gone. Doubt if I ever opened more than a few over all these years!
Rolls of single PMG cable (single conductor) and heaps of old electronics, transformers etc etc. I will never ever use, so out they went.
Cant see much difference, apart from clearing the open floor.
So finally spending a few hours each day, I have replaced a heap of old wiring and started work on the old helix.
In between times I have lined up all the DC locos that need sound, and started installing the decoders, which I purchased each time I bought a loco (I hate to think what value of stuff has been put away for many years.
I did take a few pictures though. Lets see if any are able to tell the story?
And so the helix forms another reversing loop, that is three of them.
The power van supplied 415 volts to the gang and tested out the rail joints and solder joints as we went.
And so I cut the whole top level out of the section using insulators which I started doing a few weeks back.
The new cable ran back to the Tam Valley Hex Juicer which is rated at 3 amps per reversing section. (I think, and we will wait and see, as their could be 6 engines with sound operating via the Juicer at any time)
The helix will be covered to take it out of the view and a curved back drop will hide the wiring and electronics.
I suppose most of you know what a juicer looks like, and so this out of focus shot could have been left out? Anyway this checks frog polarity of 6 points. Or you can use jumpers to pair up 1 and 2 leaving 4 frog juicers spare, or pair up all and create 3 polarity reversers, which is what I have done here
On my first test, the loco stopped to the right, where I had forgotten about the insulators I added years ago.
Here I continue to tidy up the feeds. This is overkill, however ask Al, I tend to overkill everything.
Anyway, I ran the 4 wire feeds around the helix, fixing it in place with hot glue. Then connected the feeds to the bottom half of the helix.I separated BG from SG letting the two SG tracks share a feed.
However I did feed all three tracks with 6 wires creating separate reversers.
The train continued on to the bottom points where I discovered a loss of power again.
Must have left a feed out? So that's next job, after lunch, I guess?
This is the first train to ever use the SG part of the helix. Up till now I only operated on the BG.
The train operated ok, with just a few rough spots. Wont take Al long to sort them out after the pandemic is sorted Ha Ha!
I still have to glue in two levels of wiring add add another 40 pairs of droppers to eliminate the mechanical power routing via the fish plates.
It never ends, however all the droppers are "almost" in place. Just need to shorten them and relocate them to the inside of the helix, by passing them under the tracks.
The SG is still incomplete, requiring the top level feed to run down the new helix and into Albury
Then we can knock in the golden spike. All I need to do is find a nugget. After all I do live in Yackandandah and the Chinese already mined my land (for five years) So hoping they might have left me some :D
Cheers
Rod
