2018_04_15 Updates on various projects

2018_04_15  Making Roads, Looking at lighting and an Update from Roger on Wodonga Station.

On Saturday Graeme and Peter from Murray Railway Modellers turned up to get me motivated... again :)

I had not been introduced to Peter before, as he is newly arrived in Wodonga from Tumut, and is well known for his MR work up there. I do remember talking with him at Wagga one year.

Welcome to Murray Modellers Peter. We should have a lot to talk about.

Graeme demonstrated some surfaces for the roads he has been building here. Not yet finished, but already looking good.

 Hovel Street near the old Bandianna Branch.

Osbornes Sytreet near the Shell Depot and Coal Siding.

Ok before I get to Rogers post, I took some pictures of lighting we might be able to incorporate on Wodonga platform ??

 This one is an iodine orange lamp from the 70's

 Its using a grain'o'wheat bulb and running on 9v

 It might need full 12v

 This is a modern halogen  type and it will twist back into shape.

 Its a bright white LED on 9v via 1k resistor. might run on lower voltage?

 This one is my favorite (on right) Be good for platform under the canopy.

 1K resistor on 9v battery

 I like this one very much, but I think it was much earlier than 1970.

This one could represent the old green and white enamel reflector dishes with 200 watt incandescent globes? Platform lights near to brick walls of building?

 

Ok now to the Station Building itself .

Here is Roger telling us what is happening....

"After many months of drawing in Corel Draw, the completed files were sent to Stuart Walker to have the components laser cut.

Photo 1 

This shows the 0.8mm ply sheet used for the window and door components. The window components are held in place with small tabs which were cut with a Stanley knife.

Underneath (left side) is a completed window glued together with PVA. On the right is the 4 layers of a double hung sash window. The first layer is what locates the window in place as the completed window is pushed in from the inside of the wall. The next layer is the lower pane frame. Then comes the upper pane frame. The last layer sits on top and forms the main frame around the window opening. Clear styrene is cut for the panes and inserted from behind and are held in place by carefully applying PVA around the edges.

Photo 2 

 

 

This shows the assembled windows and doors with all 54 of them painted and ready for glazing.

Photos 3 and 4. 

 

 

The walls and floor are 3mm MDF. The walls of Wodonga are full brick, hence the need for thick walls. You can see the tabs on the corners so that adjoing wall sections are simply pushed onto the tabs on the floor and joined together and glued with PVA. The wall facing the platform has not been glued as yet because i thought it might be easier to install the windows first.

Photo 5 

 

 

A view from above. I should have had the holes for the veranda posts included in the Corel Draw file to be laser cut. However, I drilled these holes myself as accurately as possible.

I found that when assembling the components and test fitting the ceiling that I had made a few errors. These were able to be corrected. However, I am revising the drawings to correct these errors so that if Stuart want s to sell the kit commercially, then the kit with these minor corrections should go together with no problems."

Note Stuart will have enough information to  build this station kit for anyone who might like to purchase it :)

2018_04_10 Waiting for parts? ok lets find those amps

2018_04_10 Talking with Marcus Ammann.

So I decided to do some more carriage lighting. And I decided whilst I was doing that, I would adjust the heights of the various carriages as I do each carriage.
I have KD close coupling couplers to fit, strip lighting, and a power supply.
I will do the Harris set with pickups and flicker free circuits, use strip leds to simulate fluoro lighting.
(waiting parts)
I will do the Auscision carriages with similar strip lights, however I will battery operate these as per the video a few days back (Waiting parts)


Thanks to Tim who sent me this good advice
 "Both the N cars and the S cars show a tare height to the top of the roof
sheet (not including the projections on the roof, that's a different
height measurement) of 3955mm. That's 45.4mm in H0.

The Auscision N cars measure about 46.2 for the roof sheet height so
they are about 0.7 to 0.8mm over height.

The (Powerline) new S car (SOP Bogie) measures a pitiful 44.0 for the
roof sheet dimension so they are 1.35 to 1.45mm under height.

Couple an N set to an S set and you have a combined difference of about
2.2mm / 7.5" in height. Now, every time I see the Shepparton train there
is a good height difference between the N cars and the BZN or BTN car
at the side sill level, but not as much as between Auscision and ( Powerline).

Raising the S cars shouldn't be overly hard, some washers, new bogie
screws, coupler box padding etc should cover most of it. I don't know
what raising them will do to the look.

Lowering the N cars will be a lot more problematic."

And thats all I am going to do. The Auscision cars look ok behind the S Class, and lifting Powerline cars to match will make me happy if the gaps over the bogies do not look ridiculous. Thanks Tim.

Now the Amp gauge was another discussion we had on FB.  Everybody knows that you can measure voltage by touching the pos and neg terminals?
And we all know amperage needs to be in line with the flow of electrons?
OK stupid old me forgot that, didn't I?
So after Marcus intervened we sorted the Rampmeter out and it now reads voltage and amps, finally.

Some pics? Why not?

It always showed 13.7 v and 0.03 a   And I counted the number of locomotives on the track. 16 powered but only three had sound switched on. Total amps available?  8 amps because I decided that running three boosters to this 8 amp, plus 5 amp, plus 5 amp was unnecessary. That is 26 amps!

 The Digitrax Powerpack can provide 25 amps at 16 volts. Digitrax seem to give you 13.9 v when switched to HO position.

Beside the Digitrax transformer (switchable from 110v AC to 230V AC) is a homemade 30 Amp transformer that outputs 16.8 volts DC and AC. Which happily ran the layout before I bought the Digi one.
The two smaller transformers supply pure 12v to run the LED strip lights and are outputting about 30amps each.

Trains dont even care that the rampmeter is in line, and everything is operating off one 8amp command station without any boosters.
Thanks Marcus for such good advice
Cheers all .....  oops I forgot about my Trainorama S Class failure :(


Ok has anybody else seen this failure?

Notice the gear at the top is just floating and completely locks up when the worm tries to turn it.
I suspect a pin has worked its way out?

I found some brass tube which press fitted through all three pieces, that is front, gear and back.

However this locked the gear and it could not turn!
I wanted to have the gear turning freely on the shaft held in place by sides, however the mech is riveted together these days, and that was not going to work.

So I found a drill slightly larger than the shaft and opened out both sides leaving the gear a firm fit.

It was still tight so before lubricating it, I spun the mech with a dremil and it loosened up in a few minutes. Applied lubrication and put it all back together again!  All good and it works ok.

This is the tube I bought to do the job ;)

Mow I can say   good night all :D

2018_04_06 So which is right?

2018_04_06  Who got it right? Powerline old, Powerline New, Auscision or Trainorama??

 Trainorama S Class and old Powerline!

  Trainorama S Class and Auscision N Class cars!

 Auscision N set and NEW Powerline!

 as above

 Aus plus traino

 Auscision and old Powerline!

New Powerline and  Auscision!

 Trainorama and NEW Powerline!

 Trainorama and Auscision!

Ok enough today! Cheers
Rod

2018_04_04 Nice little Exhibition at Bendigo

2018_04_04 picked up some goodies at Bendigo!

Pictures?  First of all called into Model Rail shop closing down sale and got 25% off, but not much I really needed.

Geoff the shop Manager builds these for his customers and I had to have them especially as they were discounted also. Illuminated also    Thanks Geoff :)

 Also from shop, should dress up someplace around the depot. Wodonga had a similar (smaller) crane lifting 44 gallon drums.

ok wrong scale, but it probably will lift 5 ton instead of 3 ;)

And from the Exhibition, mainly Owen from Geelong

More in stock, missed out last time.

 

Heaps of lights! add to haul from Kyneton.

And something that I did not really need. Just looked nice Ha Ha

Cheers
Rod

2018_03_25 A change is like a holiday?

2018_03_25  I'm just kidding I think....

Something different to break up the monotony (of rewiring)


 First of all, a Locomotive that was working on DCC well for a year or two, suddenly starting playing up. I opened it up and found these two devices used as suppressors under Aus law, were still connected. One had burns on it. I snipped them out and replaced the connections with plain wire (ends of resistors)  Problem resolved and engine performs well, probably better than it ever has. Moral of story? cut off these two suppressors and the capacity that sits between them when converting to DCC. The capacitor is removed and not bridged with plain wire.

Strange shorts  STILL!!

I was working on the layout and shunted a train away from where I was working. After the job was complete, I turned on the power and of course, I had another short, shutting down this whole area.
I immediately checked all my recent work, testing as I went. I removed all the plug in droppers but short persisted. I went inside and watched some TV. Several days later, I went back to problem solving. I noticed a new SDS guards van was blinking red lights, so I picked it up to look at it, and the short disappeared. It seems the van was sitting on a diamond crossing. Further when I sat the wagon on the main line it worked perfectly. But if I sat it on the diamond, it shorted out the command station once more. I spent an hour or two testing the circuits on the diamond, which were all good. 8 insulated rail joiners one rail each side to red and Black Bus! and two frogs connected to juicer which was showing appropriate lights. However they failed to change colour when an engine drove through.

Houston we got a problem! Anyway I decided to walk away for a while and look at the guards van. But then I noticed it was sitting on the Wodonga Coal siding SG  track not the crossover. So I placed it on the BG track and the short did not come back. Furthermore the diamond was connected to the SG bus, which should have been ok. I will connect it to the main through bus, and see if short goes away.

The SDS van now does not light up, so I decided to take a break and open it up, and see if I could get it working once again.... pictures?  I remembered to take some :)

CLICK PICS to enlarge

This is the SDS van. Its a beaut piece of work and I liked it enough to buy 4 of them.

Line door up with step to refit body

See two small square lugs? They have to be released to remove body.

On this photo almost to verandah see square attaching point on frame? This sits over lugs inside body!

I used 4 bread tabs to release lugs.

So here is the floor. I found two small screws that release weights sitting on top of circuit board.

The weights sit over the capacitor. The two small black cylinders (One under my thumb) have red LED's sitting inside and need to sit under light tubes for lights on body.

Great design. The steps are soft plastic that push aside without breaking.

However the body plastic is rigid, which means the end up rights are brittle. They have to sit outside the iron work and slot into holes in deck. Be gentle when putting it all back together.

Oh? near forgot the brass tabs fit on top of the bogie screws which are passed through the wheel pickups. The power then routes through the circuit board
 The right hand brass tab fell off, so a coincidence rather than a cause of the short. No sign of heat.




But I still am no closer to finding out why the guards van operates everywhere else, but causes a short circuit in the SG  parts of the Coal Siding :(
Cheers
Rod

2018_03_22 Got some seats...but...

2018_03_22  Casula had some suitable seats for under $10 so I ordered them.....

Chop these up, and repaint them and they should look pretty good with a few behinds sitting in them and lights on top.. Speaking of...

Lighting the carriages stumbled a bit today :(

Unfortunately Jaycar cannot help me with the stuff I need, and I finished up having to go to AliBaba(whatever?) in China. Had to buy 100 minimum order as well ($32 free postage)
Worst part is I am rearing to go, but will be lucky to get the order here for a couple of months, and then I will be on something else, I guess.
According to Jaycar, nobody uses self latching reed switches these days. They wanted me to use an electronic relay instead. About $5 a part ( in lieu of the convenience of a magnet and a 32c reed switch.

As I intend to store my carriages in particular tracks. I thought I might be able to suspend a magnet over track that turns lights off as cars enter siding, or turns them on as they depart. Just noticing though that you might have to reverse magnet to change switch ?? Cross that bridge when I get to it, I think.
Cheers
Rod