Tinkering in Acacia Ridge Yard

Saturday started off with a trip over to the Logan Club for their buy and sell.  Not many sellers, but some decent stuff available.  Unfortunately there were no medium radius Peco points which was my only reason for attending.  So I then went to Austral Modelcraft to pick up a length of piano wire and some more rail joiners.  I then had to rush home as the afternoon was supposed to be filled with cricket.  But with all the rain on Saturday, school cricket was eventually washed out, but not until we were half way to the ground before we received the tweet.  So after turning around, and heading home, I was able to head down to the shed yesterday and put in some time doing a few jobs.

I had planned to do some investigation (really a refresher) into what I had done for the crossover from the Standard Gauge Yard to the Dual Gauge Yard at Acacia Ridge.  Upon finding my dump of the contents of my 4 NCE Mini Panels, I worked out that I had programmed one to throw this crossover. The panel on the facia was connected to the two inputs in the Mini Panel and when I pushed the buttons on the panel, the Mini Panel light lit.  But I had not yet purchased a point accessory controller. to fire the two Peco point motors under the two points in the crossover.  So that is now on next Saturday’s shopping list.

My next task was to potter around with the track that forms the dual gauge track through the Acacia Ridge Yard and I decided to relay it a further 1m towards the Beaudesert Road level crossing (yet to be installed).  So that was done and all track tested with a combination of locos - standard and narrow gauge.  All OK.  I then made up a task list for today.

So today I went down to the shed and got distracted – as you do.  I found my two dodgy 12mm points that I had confined to the spares bucket, and fixed one and then laid them in the narrow gauge yard in Acacia Ridge.  So that has allowed me to install a left hand point from track 2 leading to another track that will house a future point for splitting into track 3 and track 4.  So some straight track was installed in this location and in the location of track 4, I placed a right hand point to head back into a siding in the yard.  I also resurrected some of my dual gauge track and used that to lay track 4, even though it is only narrow gauge.  I then wired up this extra track work and tested it with a loco.  After a few minutes the track in the narrow gauge yard stopped working.  An investigation revealed that a solder joint had failed and a wire had some loose.  So that was resoldered and everything was good again.  While doing this investigation, I found out that a wire had also some loose from the narrow gauge track on my totally separate from the layout Powercab test track in Grafton Yard.  That was resoldered and I also found that the DC wires for the test track had come away from the 12V power pack.  So these were also reconnected. So test track is now working again. 

So I then prepared and laid the wires that need to be installed for the new NCE Snap-it that I will buy next week.  The wires are to go from the snap it to the two point motors to power the crossover to the dual gauge track in Acacia Ridge Yard. 

I had also planned on working out why my layout Voltmeter was not working.  But I never got around to it.  So that will now be another task for next week.

I did also start some dreaming.  I think I will look into designing and installing some new layout lights above Fisherman Islands Yard, over the Kyogle to Fairy Hill section, over Park Road Siding and over South Brisbane Interstate.  So I guess that means that I need to buy another 4 runs of 5m LED lights.  While at it, I might buy a spare set.  So I’ll also need at least 4 power supplies.  So I’ll need quite a lot of 42 x 19 pine to build some frames and cantilever the lights out from the supports to be over the scenery in question.  So that might be a job for April as I am having some leave.