Fixing a Few Issues

Last Tuesday was the visit by the Tuesday Night crew.  I had a few locos running up and down Acacia Ridge yard, but when I ran out onto the dual gauge towards Clapham, the locos stopped.  I knew that I did not connect two power connectors near where I put the narrow gauge point into Rocklea yard last week, but I didn’t think that was the reason.  

Anyway on Saturday I was intent on fixing all the issues in Acacia Ridge Yard and the track to Clapham Yard.  I turned the power on and there was an instantaneous short in the Acacia Ridge Yard power district.  I had just connected 4 or 5 droppers before hand in the narrow gauge yard.  So I disconnected them and still could not work out what the cause was.  I then decided to humour myself, and walked around to the section of track in track 3 of the concentric loops in Acacia Ridge Yard and looked at the two car carriers sitting in that location and looked at the wheels on one set of bogies.  It was sitting across the isolation joint of the reversing loop.  Hmmmm!  Now I had no idea why it was not switching the reversing loop instead of just causing a short on the NCE EB1.  So I moved the wagon 1cm, so the wheels were no longer on the join.  I turned the power back on and this time, the power district fired up.  So I re-connected the droppers that I just disconnected.  I then set about trying to track back why the mainline had no power.  I reconnected the two droppers that I lazily did not re-connect last week.  I also ran a dropper to the narrow gauge siding in Rocklea Sidings, as I found out that a section of track was fed by the track and there was a bad joint, so I now bypassed that section with a connection to the track bus.  I then touched a solder joint where the track bus starts at the southern end of Clapham Yard and everything came alive.  So I had a jumper that was just about to come adrift.  So after that, the layout was all back to working.  I didn't realise that when I laid the track last weekend, I never cleaned the new track I laid for standard gauge trains, so trains run rather badly through the new trackage on the mainline just outside Rocklea Sidings.  I then did a bit of testing for the far end of the dual gauge headshunt at the southern end of Acacia Ridge.  It revealed that I was missing a track jumper there, after a set of point, so the head shunt was dead.  So that was added and that section is now all good as well.

I then attached the new NCE QSnap to the layout fascia.  This was then attached to the track bus and it will be used to control the points in Rocklea Sidings.  I ran wires to the point motor controlling the points into the narrow gauge siding.  A quick test and everything is working fine.  I need to get my hands on a Tillig LH set of points for the standard gauge sidings to be started and a HO - HOm crossing so I can really get stuck into the real track work of the Rocklea Sidings.  I’m hoping to have this all complete before mid September, as my layout is one of the open layouts for the NMRA Convention on the Gold Coast this year.

The NCE QSnap on the left next to an NCE Snap-It.  At the top of the picture on the right is the narrow gauge point into Rocklea Sidings already connected and working

The entry into Rocklea Sidings.  On the right is the narrow gauge.  On the left of that is where the standard gauge will branch off.

The layout of Rocklea above.

I have also started to look at what else I need to do before September.  There is some ballasting of Old Cassino station and yard required and a small section of the mainline south of Cassino just short of the Bruxner Highway.  So these were done today.

The few feet either side of The Bruxner Highway were ballasted today.

The eastern end of Old Cassino how ballasted.

The Cassino or western end of Old Cassino.

I have also had some brain waves to do some small detail accessories for a couple of places for the layout.  I am going to install some safety bollards around a work site.  I made about 16 of these last night and painted then a very nice safety orange colour today.  I will also make up some safety tape to go between the bollards.  Now that will be interesting.

I will also try and make a couple of drones that will be flying over the layout in some places.  

The train above is the Cement Limestone train that will use Rocklea Sidings.  It is sitting on the dual gauge headshunt in Clapham Yard.  It is propelled back to the sidings.