Doing Some Maintenance

Well this weekend was a nice relaxing one in terms of not spending the weekend doing anything work related.  Although I had about a 20-30 SMS exchange with one of my new staff members from work yesterday, but that was associated with any stress.  Yesterday we again attended two soccer games.  The first for school, ended well.  Kyle scored the first and third goals in the first half and set up one other in the first half with a nice back heel and another in the second half with a great cross.  So the school soccer season is now ended with that 7-3 result.  The afternoon Club game was against a team of rough country bumpkins who were about 30cm taller than our guys.  They were the top team and had been blowing everyone off the park.  The score was 2-0.  Our keeper played like superman.  It was a fantastic game.  Maybe the corner has now been turned and they will start to be more competitive for the second sound of games.  I’m sure they will have a win or two in the rest of the season.

So onto the topic of what this Blog is all about.  Today I went to the shed in the later morning to run my steel train sequence.  That was 6 trains in order. 

Sequence  Train  Train name                     Depart   Arrive   Departs            Arrives

No.               No.                                            Time    Time

5                    8      Up Steel Train                  1:20    5:10    Acacia Ridge    Grafton 

16                 65     Dn Rocklea Steel Shunt   4:00    4:15    Acacia Ridge    Rocklea 

33                 66     Up Rocklea Steel Shunt   8:00    8:15    Rocklea            Acacia Ridge 

83                  7       Down Steel Train            17:00   17:50  Grafton             Cassino 

90                  7A    Down Steel train              19:00   21:00  Cassino            Acacia Ridge

102              70      Acacia Ridge Steel Shunt 22:00  22:45  Acacia Ridge        

So I started off running my empty steel train back toward Grafton Yard, it was evident that the first issue was that the train could not leave the Acacia Ridge Yard.  One set of points was against the train.  It turned out that the wire on the Acacia Ridge Control Panel for track two (where the steel train was) had come adrift.  Thus I could not throw that point.  Sure, I can call up the address of each point motor individually and throw them, but I could not find my manual list of point addresses.  So I can fix that loose wire pretty easily.  Once past that location, the locos stopped dead trying to exit the yard towards Glenapp Loop.  So the next problem solving action revealed that the new baseboard for the Acacia Ridge Narrow Gauge Yard extension from the last few weeks, has impacted on a Peco point motor using a Peco baseplate.  So the point would not throw in one direction, thus no power was provided up to the points that fan out for the yard exit tracks.  So I cut about 2mm of wood away from where the point motor base was, and the point was now able to go back into its position and it could then throw in both directions just like a bought one.  So the steel train could finally depart south.  However, the steel train was having running issues.  Three couplers on various wagons were playing up.  The train was continually separating.  I’d couple it back up and it would then separate at another location in the train.  Very frustrating.  So one by one, the troublesome wagons were removed, taken to the workbench and checked out.  One KD on one wagon had lost its KD spring and its jaws were not shutting.  A new spring was adder and that was not working.  Another troublesome coupler came good after a few manipulations of the jaws.  I think some sort of dust or dirt had got into the spring.  So that was removed and it was all OK as well.  The third wagon had recently had a bogie screw replaced.  But not too well.  The wagon was now too high at one end.  So I removed a couple of KD washers from under the bogie and it is now back to normal and not too high.  So normal services soon resumed.

The train ran quite well from that point on.  I did have some issues with the entry into Rocklea Sidings for the Steel Shunt Train, but after some slight adjustments and packing, everything was then working well again. 

All this occurred while it started to rain outside the shed, and a storm came over.  Not good weekend weather, but I didn’t get wet.

This week is Tuesday Nighters and I have no idea where we are meeting.  Maybe I need to pay more attention at the meetings.  I’m sure someone will tell me before Tuesday Night.