The Week That Wasn't

This week I have done relatively little modelling except from building a couple of small detail items for the Div 1 FreeMo modules.  I have built a set of back steps from styrene, and then added a railing to the steps from styrene rod.  This will go out the back of a house on one of the modules.  Next modelling activity was with some fine phosphor bronze wire lines that can be added to a number of the clothes lines sitting in the back yards of various houses on the modules.  I also put together various types of ladders from kits that I had sitting around in my spares bucket.  One of these ladders will allow the guy currently sitting on the roof of a house to get up and down to/from the roof.  This guy is installing the TV antenna on the roof and he is connecting the co-axe cable

However, today as I started to clean up the shed in preparation for the meeting this coming Tuesday night at my place, I realised that I had promised to create a few detail items for one guy to pick up at the upcoming Brisbane Exhibition.  I spoke to him at the last Buy and Sell for our Club, and I did not have any of the items that he wanted on my table.  But I am now working towards fixing that issue.  I created 5 long and 5 short steel wire loads for various HO wagons.  I think I had sold the last of my long loads at the Buy and Sell.  I then made a large batch of 4” x 4” pieces of wood (to be used as dunnage), and painted these to install in a large number of steel wagons or open wagons, so various steel loads can sit on them on.  This allows the forklifts to get under the loads to help with unloading.  These have been made to go inside my steel wagons for NSW and QR.  I have currently made up 4 large pipe loads of various sizes and painted these.  I have also made up 3 x 6m loads of small steel rod bundles.  These were also painted today.  I need to make up some steel plate loads and then add some “I” and “H” beam loads.  That is this week's job. 

I had plans of adding the various windows to my Old Cassino station building this week, but I did not get motivated to do any work on that project. 

On Tuesday this week I will also add an extra NCE Throttle to my layout, as Darren recently picked up two NCE throttles online, and I went halves with him - so one each.  This throttle will not be radio.  However, after I take the throttle apart to check that it has a JST plug inside, I might eventually treat myself with a Wifi-Trax wifi module for this new throttle.  These modules work pretty well and are relatively cheap compared to installing NCE radio into a throttle.

Working on the Modules

This week I have been working on my mini modules.  All are complete and tried to fit them all together.  I added some guides to one end of each module, so it slips inside the next.  I also purchased some packets of small pegs from a local $2 shop.  These allow me to ‘clamp’ or should I say peg the modules together as they are assembled.  I added foam to the modules along the front of the layout – the equivalent of a 2” sheet of foam.  Then I needed to added transitions back down to just baseboard level.  The 2” foam was so that I could model a creek running underneath the track in one of my modules.  After adding foam to my mini modules, I then realised that I can remove this foam from all but the module with the creek, and just add it to the module with the creek to it.  I will make this module have legs that 2” shorter than the rest, to make up for the 2” of foam on top.

All the left hand end front scale modules

This shows where the Branch line comes off the main module.  In the background is the Old Casino Station building before the left end extension was correctly sized and built.

This is where the branch line joins back up to the side module to then go around to the rear staging.

On Tuesday we went to Bob’s place for our fortnightly meeting.  We had a very nice civilised view of the Brisbane River and all the city cats going for a run up and down the river.

I also got around to scaling out the measurements for the extension to the Old Casino Station building.  I then got around to cutting out the doors and windows.  This week I will have to go looking for my box of windows and see if I have enough to fit in the current window openings of the building.

Saturday was a working bee on the Division’s FreeMo modules again.  We did some nice work.  As usual we had plenty of laughs and a good deal of work did get done.  Never as much as you expect.  I think some of the items that we added will create some interesting scenes that people will talk about.  I came away from the day with a list of items to build, or acquire before the next working bee so I can install these onto the modules on that day.

Styrene Building and Planning for Some More Styrene Building

After borrowing a packet of Styrene from PK on last Sunday afternoon, I got started cutting it up on Monday.  Initially I put together 4 frames and the packet was gone.  These frames were for my 1:10 scale models of the modules for my future layout.  On Tuesday afternoon I received a text that my styrene order had come in.  That meant that Wednesday morning was a drive to Corinda station followed by a train trip to Ipswich. 

Previously at Ipswich station there was this strange signal on platform 2 that I had talked about before. 

The signal on the left has a weird route indicator on it.

When I was coming home from Ipswich, I saw a "Special" come into platform 2 at Ipswich and sit there.  Platforms 1 and 2 were closed as they were painting the platform, so we were on platforms 3 and 4 for our trains.  I saw the signal in question on platform 2 light up, with the route indicator first, then it went from red to yellow to green.

The 'Special' train was going from platform 2 to the Down Main.

While I was at Ipswich I picked up 5 packets of styrene and when I got home, I made up another 6 scale model modules.  Attention now must turn for my non-standard modules.  So at this point in time, I have assembled everything except the last module for the branch line around to the stabling/staging.

Today was the day that I added legs to all my scale model modules for my new exhibition layout.  They look quite good.  I still need to build the last module.

I received an email from Brad in Lismore on Monday afternoon helping me with the size of the extension on the Old Casino station building.  He said that there were 18 sheets of iron on the roof on that section of the building.  That was a great start.  With each sheet being 760mm when overlapped, that made the station building extension about 12.16m long.  In HO scale that is 139.6mm.  With 2 doors and three windows to include in the front of the building extension, I can now try and guess the actual size of each item and the spaces between them all to fit into my 139.6mm.  My initial calculations with a few tweaks, has the building coming out to 140mm in size.  I will draw that up this coming week and see how it looks compared to the photos I have and see if I need to adjust anything, before I commit to cutting up a piece of styrene.

Thursday I had to ring Anthony and pull out of his Saturday Afternoon Ops session due to my persistent cough.  I suggested that Darren could fill my place, if he was so inclined.  After some new medication on Thursday night and Friday and Saturday, I still ventured over to the Bayside Exhibition on Saturday morning where I ran into Darren and Brendon on their way to the Ops Session.  I also had a nice chat to numerous people at the Exhibition, some Bayside club members, Logan Club people, Action Club people, some mates I ran into people walking around and a number of various shop owners at the Exhibition.

There is a Point!

I took the easy way out this week by trying to adjust the trackwork on my dodgy dual gauge point.  I ran wagons through it and they all worked.  I waited a couple of days and brought out the power pack on Wednesday and successfully ran 12mm and 16.5mm locos through the straight track.  I tried to run a couple of 12mm locos through the point through the diverging path and they all derailed.  They could travel from the diverging end to the toe, but not the other way.  Bugger!  So I did need to get PK’s point jig out and build a new one.  I cut up the sleepers and gapped them on Wednesday afternoon.  I then cut off the various lengths of rail and just placed them in the jig.  Later in the day I went down to the shed and used my grinding stone to chamfer the two point V’s and then cut out the stock rails where the point blades meshed with them.  I then reduced the point rails to fit into the stock rails.  At this point I lost interest and went onto other activities.

On Thursday after picking up my Railway Digest from the local newsagency I soldered up the various V’s and attached them and the stock rails to the sleepers in my dual gauge point.  Bit by bit I soldered everything else together.  Everything seemed good with the point.  I could not run locos as the insulation gaps were not cut.  But wagons went via all routes.

On Friday I spent some time rummaging through the shed for items to sell at the Buy and Sell and put all this aside. 

Saturday was NMRA AGM day for both the Australasian Region and our Division.  We knew the outcomes before we started, as all positions had either one, or no nominations.  I got there early as I had to help get the Div 1 FreeMo modules out of the container and put them up in the garage for viewing.  I then transformed into a parking controller, ensuring everything attending got a good park.  The meeting was a good civil, organised event, with a Div 1 Show and Tell, then the Special General Meeting for the AR up first, followed by the AGM for the AR.  Then the Div 1 AGM.  At the Show and Tell, PK cut the insulated gaps in my dual gauge point.  The day’s activities were all streamed to the region and our division.  That was followed by some presentations, with one presentation, done so remotely by Aaron from Newcastle, on the topic of remote operations.  We had Tyler in Tasmania, as Controller and Anthony and Geoff at the meeting running trains on Aaron’s layout, on the large screen at the meeting.  The day ended it all with a tour of the inside of Paul’s FAM coach in his back yard.  When I got home I had to resolder a couple of rails to sleepers, and in doing so, I bridged one of these micro cuts that PK did – Bugger!

Sunday was another early start with our Buy and Sell on.  I sold a couple of items, but that bad man Barnacle Bob was selling some unbelievably good books for cheap prices, and I had to assist with rehoming some of these.  That was fine until I found someone selling a stack of code 83 points for fantastic prices and I had to also rehome them for my future exhibition layout.  I also received some order for some styrene steel loads.  I have not built these for a while, but I will build a few of these to be ready for the upcoming AMRA Exhibition in July, where one guy will pick them up from me.  On the way home, I detoured by PK’s and had a beer, and he recut an insulating gap in one of the rails of my dual gauge point.  PK also loaned me a packet of styrene to tide me over before I pick up my delivery this week.  When home I started on the task of reading all the new books I picked up today from Barnacle.

This coming week I will pick up the styrene that I need for a building project, and put one packet aside to give back to PK.

Not Doing Much This Last Week

Not much was happening this week.  However, I decided to create a model of my future model railway.  I was using a 10:1 scale, and cut up a number of 3mm styrene sheets to represent the top of a number of modules for my future layout.  The sheets of styrene were 6cm wide and 24cm long.  This will represent the 2.4m x 600mm modules.  I also propose to cut up some 2.5mm x 2.5mm styrene strip to simulate the 25.4mm aluminium square tube that the modules will be made out of.  A check of my styrene supply reveals that there is only one strip left in a packet that I have.  I was thinking that I needed to buy at least 3 packets, maybe 4 packets to provide enough styrene.  I then may have to get some more in the future if I model the legs and other components on the modules, like back boards etc.

The other activity was rounding up all my dual gauge pieces of track and connection flex track to each end and then connecting them to a DC power supply.  I then ran narrow gauge and standard gauge locos through the various routes.  Some of the points had a short.  But a quick look at the sleepers, or using an Ohmmeter on the sleepers I quickly found all the issues and remedied them.  So the locos went all the pieces of track quite well, except for one.  On that piece of track the diverging route kept derailing the narrow gauge locos.  So I thought I would have to build a replacement piece of track.  That would entail a trip to PK’s and borrowing his dual gauge jig again.

I made a trip to the Club on Saturday for the early morning meeting about the Clubroom HO layout.  Who books meetings at 9:00am on a Saturday?  I took my two DH’s to the Club.  I ran one back and forth on the 12mm upper deck while the layout meeting was on for a bit of a laugh.  It ran reasonably well.  The second DH was waiting for a chip.  PK provided that to me on Saturday morning.  I quickly removed the two wires from the motor to the bogie pickups, and wired in the decoder.  I placed it on the DC test track and it ran back and forth.  I switched the track to DCC and fired up the programming track.  I set its address to long address 40.  I then fired up the loco and after a few second, a few puffs of smoke came out of the decoder.  I ran it again on DC and it worked.  A couple more times it ran on DCC and then large puffs of smoke and sparks came from the decoder.  The motor still turns on DC.  It has got me stumped.

I know that the mech in the DH loco is a K&M and will draw quite some amps.  That is why we got a 1 Amp continuous and 2 Amp peak N scale decoder.  So I think this week I will pull the loco apart again and rewire it for DC and install an ammeter between the DC controller and the motor to determine how much amperage the loco is pulling.  Then I will try and work out if anything on the loco frame is live, and if so I will have to insulate it and give the DCC conversion a second go.

While I was working on my loco in the Club workshop area, Warren was showing off a 3D printed Corrugated iron roller.  He demonstrated it and the output was pretty damn good.  I put an order in for one.  Hopefully I will see him either next Saturday or Sunday at the Club Buy and Sell and procure one.  I can keep one very well employed creating corrugated iron sheets for my scratch build buildings.

On the way home on Saturday I diverted to PK’s place and he gave me a beer.  I borrowed the required jig and acquire a couple of lengths of code 83 rail.  This arvo I got out the soldering iron out and started to adjust the rail gauge on the diverging route.  So I have re-tested hand pushing bogies and various wagons through the point and it is a lot better then before I started.  Later this week I will get the DC power supply back out and test it with a loco.  Hopefully I do not have to rebuild a new point, but I might just do it for practice.

More Layout Work

Between the rain showers on Monday this week I went to the shed and pottered around.  I found out that the Timetable card for the Gold Coast Motor Rail in the next Ops Session was already sitting in the pile of trains already run, when it was still sitting in track 3 at Grafton Yard, yet to carry a passenger.  So the timetable card was repositioned in the yet to be run pile.  A review of the next 7 timetable cards show that there are large number of trains starting at either 10:00 am, 10:10 am or 10:20 am, so I guess we know that the fast clock will kick off at 9:50am next Ops Session.  I ran the Gold Coast Motor Rail from Grafton to Cassino back platform road where it also departs at 10:10am.  So I will need at least a crew of 8 to all be running trains soon after kick off during the next session.  Boy is North Coast Control going to have his hands full.

I also took the opportunity to run my QR SX set from the southern end of Clapham Yard through the yard and stopped it in Yeerongpilly station.  On Tuesday it ran all the way through to South Brisbane Station.  It had some issues in some spots but it made it.  So Wednesday was fixing day.  I needed to adjust the track at a couple of track joins which were under and over gauge.  I also had to pack the track in a couple of spots.  The packing was used to reduce the steepness of gradient change.  Before I did this, the cowcatcher on my 1460 class loco bottomed out in a couple of spots.  That is not good when it occurs and it gets stuck behind a piece of track at a join.  Now it runs very smoothly.  On Wednesday I also took the opportunity to lengthen the platforms at Park Road Station so a 7 car SX set will fit in the platforms.  These platforms are on a bit of a curve, so I used a jig saw to help curve the platform around the track.

I couple of years back I added more cement wagons to my Grafton to Murwillumbah Cement train with these four wagons being offloaded at Old Cassino.  They were placed in the Timber Siding, which I didn’t really have.  I placed them in the lead to the Loop line at Old Cassino.  This caused considerable discomfort to many train operators when trying to push wagons into the Dairy Siding at the opposite end of the yard at Old Cassino, or just trying to cross trains when both trains were considerable long.  So on Monday I bit the bullet and investigated the installation of a true Timber Siding at Old Cassino.  There was space between the Construction siding and the Loop track.  So I replaced a RH point with a 3 way point from the Loop.  I sprayed the track area with water on Monday to loosen up the ballast and used a putty knife to get under the ballast under the point.  On Tuesday I dremelled the track joiners at the northern end and slid out the point.  After a bit of clean up of the area, I then added the 3-way point and everything was good.  I then laid the Timber Siding and then added ballast and secured it with white glue from a dropper.  This was left to dry.  The wagons in the Lead for the Loop were moved to the Timber Siding.  I also put another Cement wagon into service on the train, so now the Timber Siding at Old Cassino has 5 wagons.  The shunt list documents were updated as was the timetable card’s instructions for the two Cement Trains – the Up and Down ones which run through Old Cassino.

I have also started work on scratch building the station building at Old Cassino.  I should also complete the station platform as well when I finish the station building.  I found an old photo of the Old Casino Station Building, and it looks just like a standard A5 building.  However, after looking at the photos I had on hand from the various trips down there, the station building looks like a mirror image to the A5 station building plan.  Subsequently a rather large extension room was built onto the western end of the station building, maybe a signal cabin?  At this stage I have no confirmation of any dimensions of this building, but that does not stop me starting to scratch building that building. 

The reversed A5 building.  The waiting room with seats on the left has been boarded up, so that is how I modelled it.

The starting of the additional room on the western end of the building.

Saturday was another working bee on the Div 1 FreeMo modules.  We had a guest appearance from PK and his magic spray gun, and he sprayed all the track a very nice rust colour.  Once dry I then got into teaching the troops how to ballast.  We just ran out of ballast after finishing the last module we were working on.  They are starting to look pretty good.

Operations Session Clean Up

Following last Sunday's Operations Session on Cassino, I took the opportunity to look at enhancing some things around the layout and then looked at a couple of locos that might have had issues.

My Tillig dual gauge point at the northern end of Acacia Ridge Yard always causes locos to stutter heading through it.  When running a consist this did not cause any issues, but when there is only a single loco this can cause a complete stall.  I cleaned the point blades with methylated spirits and a cotton bud and soldered a joiner at the toe end of the point to assist with electrical flow.  The other end is made up of all insulated joiners as this is the start of the next power district.  I have since run a couple of standard gauge locos through it in all directions and they all now performed well.  I also ran a couple of narrow gauge locos through the straight track and they also ran well.  Maybe I have fixed the issue.

Next stop was a point at the other end of Acacia Ridge Yard in track 1.  That particular point had bad electrical connectivity from the point blades so I added a permanent jumper from the diverging rail to the straight rail and now that works so much better after my tests.

Late on last Sunday I was testing the SX set hauled by the Golden Holden and it just stopped short of the section where the mainline from Acacia Ridge, the branch from Sunnybank and the lead into Rocklea Sidings all diverge.  A length of track that I installed for Sunnybank was second hand and was as dirty as sin.  So on Monday it was given a cleaning and then I ran my SX set forward and back through this junction in all directions and performance was satisfactory.  That train has not travelled too much farther as the set is sitting in Clapham Yard.

I then tried to check out an Auscision loco - number 44236.  It stopped dead while Arthur was running No 19A on last Sunday.  I could not get it to move.  But I did not try checking CV19 so see if it magically joined a consist.  I checked that later and that was not the cause.  So it left me with the only thing to do was to pull it apart and check the wires to the motor.  It looks like the motor is stuffed.  I removed the motor and applied DC direct to the motor and it does not spin.  I will have to try and get a replacement motor from Auscision.

A scan of South Brisbane Interstate (SBI) Station on Monday showed that it was in a complete mess.  OMG!  It was a complete cluster …  I had no idea where to start fixing up what was wrong.  Well the Sugar wagons should have been in Acacia Ridge Yard road 3, but were in SBI road 10.  So I ran them back.  The three wagons that should have been in SBI road 10 were in SBI road 3.  So I moved them into road 10.  Next step was to move the rest of the wagons in SBI road 3 into Park Road Siding road 2.  I noticed on Sunday that something was wrong with Park Road station, as I was supposed to do a shunt there and there was nothing in the yard.  I was supposed to add my train’s container wagons with those wagons in road 2 at Park Road Yard, but they were not there.  I think this was a left over from the last iteration of the timetable and I did not pick this up earlier.  But because of this train being at South Brisbane, the driver of the Brisbane Limited could not put that train in road 3 at SBI.  So they put it in road 2.  That was going to cause all sorts of issues as SBI road 2 is used to run around all incoming trains in SBI and that wasn’t going to occur with a train sitting in it.

So this took me about 3 hours to do, but I had fun.  I have since added quite a lot of detail to a number of Shunt Lists, to assist crews in the future.  I will spend some timeethis coming week working out where we are in the timetable for the next session.  I might back track some trains.

One item that I forgot about from the Ops Session and it probably caused us one of the most troublesome issues from the Ops Session was that the point from the Main to the Yard in Cassino near the signal box had failed.  I forgot to look at this until late on Tuesday night when I remembered about the issue.  On Wednesday morning, I used my PROCAB-R handheld to throw the points in that region individually.  They all belong to a single DS64 point controller.  I started at address 421, 422 and 423 and they all worked.  Address 424 did not.  Additionally, when I tried to enter this address the DS64 did not respond.  So it looked like that the DS64 had lost its address in output 4.  So I had to re-enter the addresses from 421 to 424 into the DS64.  Once done, I entered 424 as the accessory number on the PROCAB-R and sure enough it worked.  This is one of the very, very few times that I had lost an address in a DS64 point controller.

I have circled back to the Cassino Station Building.  I had previously found two SPDT switch to use in the controlling of the lights in Cassino Station Building and the Refreshment Rooms.  A third switch found lying around will allow me to separately control the station master office lights.  This was wired up and tested and looks good.

The other week I put my 3D printed DH, that I got from Barnacle, next to the Far North Model DH.  The 3D printed version with a motor chassis that I put together had the DH shell sitting very high.  I set about working on the chassis and removing some styrene.  After a short work period, the 3D version has come down by close to 5mm in height.  It is just a bit high, but so much better.  I really need to get around in making my other Far North Hobbies DH that I purchased a few years back now, as I have a real working DH template to work from.

Saturday involved a trip to Anthony’s place to act as the Station Master at Tatiara Downs for his Operations Session.  I worked with Alan as my shunter and Iain as West End.  I have not been the so called ‘Sheriff’ since the first few sessions I worked at Tatiara Downs.  That is about 25 sessions ago.  This is a stressful position.  I think I struggled by and everything got done.  I forgot to swap a Guards van wagon card on one train, and 'The Real Sheriff' (Brendan – who was out on the mainline running trains for a change) chastised me as his train cards were in the wrong order.  I just had it arranged back to front instead of front to back.  We had a great time in a operating session lasting about 3 hr 10 minutes.  I needed a rest after that session.