With Tuesday ANZAC Day I was able to spend some time in the shed with the ANZAC Day March on TV. I did some plastering of the Rocla Siding to Grafton Loco. I am about 1/3 of the way complete in that task. Later on, I installed the wiring from the bogies on my FAM up into the wagon to my power supply inside the coach. I was missing a capacitor, and with JAYCAR closed, I could not pick one up. I had to wait until Thursday as I could not get there before they shut on Wednesday due to late running meetings, and no JAYCAR store in the city.
I also painted my internal wagon partitions in the FAM an extremely unpleasant drab colour just like the original coaches. So I might be able to close up the wagon on this weekend.
I also sent out invitations to a mini running session at my place for next Thursday before the May Show. So far I have two 'Yes'es and one a 'No'. Still three more responses yet to occur. This session will be for a small 6 person invitation session.
Friday I was still working on the FAM coach lighting. I gathered 3 x 0402 LEDs and thought about using them for my internal lighting. Two for the side corridor and one inside one of the cabins. I then wired the lights up and decided that I needed three for the corridor. All of these had a 1K resistor in line with them when purchased. I joined them all together added another 3.6K resistor in series and the lighting looks reasonable. You can see it through the windows. I then had to work out how to position the LED lights in position inside the coach. I used two pieces of styrene close together at every location for an LED and hung the LEDs between the two pieces of styrene.
I placed the coach on the track and gave it a test. Every now and again it shorted out. Upon closer inspection I did have an issue with my FAM and it wheel pickups. After using a multimeter on the resistance setting, I determined that one wheel on one bogie was turned around. So I had to pop it out, turn it around and re-install it. That fixed the issue and the lights then continually lit and did not cause any more layout shorts.
I did get around to trying to fix some other electrical issues on the layout. I had lost power for the Cassino to Fairy Hill Staff Section. No it wasn't a lightening strike. I figured that a wire had some off somewhere, but where? I switched various staff switches and could not find the issue. It appeared that the staff switch bus had 14V going through it. But no LEDs were lit. I took the switch panels off the fascia one by one trying to identify the location of the connection issue. I thought it might have been the power supply connection, but it was a switch behind a chair that when switched one way, caused all the LEDs to go out. I switched it the other way and they all worked. There are actually 8 staff machines in this section as some of the crossing loops, or sidings, are accessible from both sides of the peninsular, so they have two staff machines - one on each side of the layout. I re-soldered that connection and it was all good.
I also attached a couple more signs to the layout describing the name of the staff machine like Cassino Meatworks Staff machines.
While running the layout, I had the power district number 6 (controlled by an EB1) just go out while nothing was occurring on the layout. This is the shortest power district on the layout. It is from Dutton Park to Fisherman Islands. There happened to be about 6 locos just sitting there pulling less than a couple of hundred milliamps according to my Amp meter. I have no idea why this short was occurring. I would turn power off to that section, and back on again and the power would come back on, but after 30 seconds it would go out again. But it did appear that a bogie from one ballast wagon sitting in Fisherman Islands Yard had run into a Peco electrofrog point in the yard. That was moved and the short did not re-occur. I also did not check to see if the lights were still on the EB1 while this short was occurring.
However, my general short that occurs when I turn the layout amp metre on, has re-appeared. I turn the amp metre off and it does not occur. I think that my bridge rectifier has bit the dust when it gets too hot and causes a shutdown. I know that the short is, because it appears to occur before the power gets to the power districts, as if it was to occur here, the NCE EB1s would retry the power after a few seconds, and the power would – power cycle. I just get no power at all. The power cycling is not occurring when the short occurs on the layout now. So the short is upstream to the EB1s. So I purchased another 6 Amp bridge rectifier today from JAYCAR to be used as a replacement, but I have not installed it yet. I will give it another chance. It appears that if I just unscrew the old bridge from under the layout, I have not had a re-occurrence of the shutdown. I will continue to monitor it.
I have started to get my things ready for next weekend at the May Show.
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