Sunday, November 13, 2011

Southern Spirit, Decoders and Upgraded Points

Quite a mixed weekend for me this weekend.  Saturday morning started with a trip to a local park with my young apprentice to photograph the Southern Spirit.  The train was supposed to get to Acacia Ridge from Roma Street at 10:00am.  We got to the park with about 10 minutes to spare.  When I fired up the camera, there was no SD card in it!  The boss had taken it and and as usual had not returned it. Curse!

Well 10:30am had rolled around, and the apprentice was bored.  My offsider took some photos with his cheap camera and I took some photos of a few trees (using the built in camera memory) while waiting. 

The apprentice getting ready to capture the train

Where we hoped the Southern Spirit might appear

A few trees to try and replicate on the layout

So after being fed up with the constant whinging about going home, we went home with no fish.  After dropping him off at home, I then heading out to the local hobby shop to stock up on decoders for the Club, I went via boundary road overbridge for a peek into Acacia Ridge Yard.  Sure enough the Southern Spirit was still sitting on the main line there at 11:00am.

So later that day, I installed some KD's on a mate from the Club's 81 Class loco, and I also installed a drop in decoder into one of David's pommy trains.  Today, in between sessions of study, I installed three more decoders (hard wired) into some more of david's pommy locos.  After lunch and another session of study, I went down to the shed for a relaxing session of replacing the two medium radius points at the Southern end of Border Loop, with two large radius points.  This involved a bit of track modification as the points are different dimensions - funny that!

I then ran my test train No. 1 container from Grafton Yard through to Acacia Ridge (while traversing both tracks at Border Loop) and then around the return loop at Acacia Ridge and then back again.  That solved the issues at Border Loop.  I discovered another track anomoly in one of the roads in Acacia Ridge Yard tracks and that was fixed with some packing.  I have also spotted another issue at the exit of Cassino Meatworks siding and the entry into the tunnel at the start of the helix there.  That will be fixed next weekend, when I might actually have some more time on my hands as I will have completed the exam I'm studying for this week. 

Now back to the books and a few trial exams for the rest of the evening.

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