On Tuesday we went down to visit Marty on the Gold Coast for our Fortnightly get together. The smart Alek produced his Raspberry Pi powered wifi controller for the new Div 1 FreeMo layout. The buggers have named the SSID already. I had a good laugh on Thursday as he told us his huge 65” TV in his train shed had shat itself. So is that when you could say “It was working yesterday Marty, was it?” Sue it was!
During the week I did some work on the portals for the Park Road Good Shed during the week. Today I completed the sections that join the portals up while watching some football on TV.
I also did some redesign work on track layout for Sunnybank Station and making the baseboard permanently sit above Acacia Ridge Yard.
Friday I continued my clean up and had the dispatcher’s desk was clean. A few other items were put away. On Friday afternoon I tested the points and you guessed it the point at Dutton Park on the standard gauge did not work again when thrown for the main line to South Brisbane Interstate Station. I checked the batteries in the remote for the air conditioner, and I fired it up and it was working. The tea/coffee was put out on the Saturday morning, and the moo juice placed in the shed fridge. So at midday on Saturday I fired up the air conditioner again, and it would not fire up/. I’m not sure if it is the remote or the air conditioner unit itself. So I fired up 3 fans inside the shed and that was all we had to keep ourselves cool. I moved some paperwork (the actual session notices) from one spot inside the shed onto the track at Acacia Ridge Yard, and then PK’s train ran straight over them and derailed. Whoops!
PK had a weird day. He ran the light engine movement off the northbound Brisbane Limited from South Brisbane Interstate to Loco Pilly. Later on he ran the light engine trip back from Loco Pilly to South Brisbane Interstate for the southbound Brisbane Limited. He then got the actual Brisbane Limited and ran it back to Grafton, until I turned off wifi in the shed (forgetting that PK was using a phone (engine driver) to run the train). The train then had no control. I had to fire up an NCE ProCAB radio equipped throttle to take over the uncontrolled Brisbane Limited.
I was kept busy during the session, responding to enquiries or fixing issues. 48126 was not running on its scheduled train, it was replaced by 44236 on #20 at South Brisbane track 10.
I had the wrong loco number on a stock train timetable card. I had 44236 instead of 4894. 44236 could not be in two places at once.
I also had the wrong loco number on one of the locos on the Brisbane Limited. The other loco was still having troubles in its runnings, and it had not been cleared from the shops yet. To make matters worse, the air conditioner in the shed would not start. But I tested it on Friday and it worked fine.
People using Engine Driver needs to understand that if I have my consists already set up, no need to do consisting on the phone. What sort of establishment do you think I run here? If they use their Procab throttle, they just choose one of the two locos and it just runs. If they decide to use some other (non preferred) method of loco control, they don’t need to set up their own consists. During the session, there was some unusual trains running. Somehow, a number of hours before it was supposed to run, the loaded northbound steel train ran from Grafton Yard to Cassino and it sat in the platform road, causing all sorts of issues about 4 hours before it was due to run. I have no idea who did this. I think someone took the wrong train. Because of its location it stopped access from the back platform road out onto the mainline and across over to the yard. In an effort to alleviate this issue, Kyle backed up over a set of points and did a Marty and derailed the coil wire wagon.
At about the same time, The Guru put his shunt train in the dirt between Cassino and Old Cassino due to a set of points being set to the wrong track.
I purchased some 12mm points and flex track on Saturday, to allow completion of Sunnybank Station. Andrew turned up at my place to drop the track off and he participated in the Op Session. This morning, I have started laying the track from the far end coming back through the platform.
Today I started fixing issues from the Ops Session. First was one headset plug-in point was not transmitting, but you were able to listen from it. The panel was fractured. This over stressing no doubt caused a wire to come off the push to talk button. I resoldered that and restrengthened the side of the panel. I checked out one sleeper wagon from the Brisbane Limited and it had issues going through the points at Acacia Ridge Yard. I ran it through in both directions and could not replicate the issue. PK failed another coach on the Brisbane Limited, so I tried to address that. It has been put back on the train. I also had to re-arrange the wagons on the oil train, and the Murwillumbah Branchline pick up goods, so they are in the correct order for teh next operations Session.
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