Dutton Park Gets Fixed

On Tuesday I went to Jaycar and picked up a couple of rolls of wire to allow me to continue the wiring task to two point motors on the top deck.  That night the Tuesday Nighters all went over to Barnacle’s place and had a great night.  Just looking at his layout is good therapy.  Of course the discussion and stirring is also good for the soul.

On Thursday morning I set about feeding all the wires, from my newly acquired ESU Switch Pilot, to two more points around the Dutton Park angle from Park Road to Fisherman Islands branch on the narrow gauge trackage.  Later in the afternoon I soldered all these wires to the point motors and realised that the first two point at Park Road platform were wired to the incorrect terminals on the Switch Pilot.  So they were swapped over as the two Dutton Park points were wired in as well.  I also had to plug into two NCE Mini Panels with my Procab controller and program them for the new addresses that I configured the points in the ESU Switch Pilot.  To me the limitation on the ESU that you can only set the addresses in groups of 4 to be a archaic limitation.  They then have the hide to say that their gear is modern.  The NCE QSNAP runs rings around the ESU Switch Pilot in this regard.  Get with it guys!

The next task was to swap out the power supply that was not working for the string of LED lights above Glenapp Crossing Loop.  I removed the power supply that was not working, and tested the new power supply.  It would not light the string of LED lights.  Then I realised that I had not plugged the new power supply in to the 240V supply.  Doh!  So I then did that and turned it on, and the string of layout LED lights lit up again.  Another problem solved, although I no longer have any spare power supplies.  So I might have to order a few more, just to keep them on the shelf just in case.

My next job was to test some of the points connected to the ESU Switch pilot.  Basically while the ESU Switch Pilot was issuing a command to throw the Peco point, it could not do anything.  It was just useless.  When I pushed the button, the other LED lights on that whole power district dimmed.  That was another example of bad product design.  No built in capacitor discharge circuit.  So upon reading the manual, it says you should attach a 18V DC 3 AMP Supply to the second set of inputs on the ESU Switch Pilot.  Most other Peco compatible point controllers from other vendors have built in Capacitor Discharge circuits.  So maybe this ESU was cheap for a reason, it left a lot of features out in its design.  So I am not a fan of how it controls Peco point motors.

On Saturday I rigged up two LEDs with a common anode and added 1K resistors to the cathodes.  I then wired this into the ESU Switch Pilot to test the lighting function, which I am using outputs 5 and 6 on the ESU Switch Pilot.  So actuating the turnout address caused the LEDs to toggle on/off and off/on.  That was very nice.  So I then ran 5 wires from my ESU Switch Pilot under the baseboard through to the high up indicator LEDs that shows the setting of the turnouts at Dutton Park.  I started pulling out the old infrastructure that I had to work these lights.  I then tested the standard gauge lights and they were wired the same as my test setup.  Everything was good.  I then tested the narrow gauge turnout indicator lights and one worked and the other didn’t.  It was then that I found that one LED was wired back the front.  So I swapped it over and then it worked well.

On Saturday Night I ventured into my first attempt at remote operations on Aaron’s layout.  We had three drivers located in Brisbane, a Dispatcher located in Tasmania and the owner of the layout in Newcastle, NSW.  He was also driving trains on the layout.  This was apparently the first time Aaron has had three remote operators.  He has a CATs panel displayed on a webpage which is tracking the location of the various trains and there are also 4 cameras showing the various station platforms streaming to the panel, which we can all see.  We all get online in Discord and can talk to the Dispatcher, (and the other drivers) while we watch the webpage get updated.  Apparently we ran 36 trains in about 3 hours 15 minutes.  Most of the services were on-time.  Things went a bit haywire when a freight came through the middle of our electric services.  I don’t believe there were any derailments either.  This is a nice layout to operate on.

It was not until today (Sunday) that I wired in the 4 wires from the ESU Switch Pilot to the 4 pairs of lights on the indicator panel.  I also connected the 5th wire (the power line) up to the LED indicator panel.  I also had to install a 1K ohm resistor in line with each of the four wires from the ESU Switch Pilot.  I gave it a test and again everything is working well.  I removed the old Peco switches that sit on top of a point motor.  The ESU Light feature using two addresses works well.

The ESU Switch Pilot on the fascia.  the first 4 outputs are for points.  The next two are for the Indicator Panel and the last 2 are currently unused.

The Indicator panel showing that the Standard Gauge is set for South Brisbane Interstate and the Narrow Gauge line is set for the direction of Fisherman Islands.

On Friday night we went to my old work rooftop haunt and celebrated my retirement, which commenced 2 weeks back.  A few mates turned up as well as some family members and we drank our way through 185 Coronas.  Our aim was 200, but we had a few no shows for various reasons.  If they all rocked up, we would have sailed past the target. 

It had to start with one.

How it ended!

P.S.  I was functioning on all cylinders on Saturday morning.