Last Sunday night, I got the styrene out and tried to
manufacture my missing end to an NOAF(?) wagon. I was kind of happy with
what was produced. On Monday night I popped down to the shed and tried to
fathom out what could be causing the lack of electrons in the Rocklea
Yard. I found the main jumper for the yard had a cold solder joint on its
pickup. This was as I had assumed last weekend.
So on Saturday afternoon this week, I resoldered that wire
and low and behold, my 1720 class loco was now running along the narrow gauge
track. To get the rest of the sidings working, I still had to add jumpers
to some other tracks in the yard, and I wired up 2 jumpers yesterday and
completed the task with 3 more today. The wiring has been successful on
all the narrow gauge track.
Last Monday night, I was checking out the wiring on the
point control underneath South Brisbane Interstate. I found a spare point
motor on the layout and I installed it under the new point that splits the
track which leads to tracks 6-8 to track 9-10. This was wired back to a
spare connection on one Digitrax DS64 point controller that I had at South
Brisbane Interstate. This was wired up, and I also had to add a new push
button to the South Brisbane Intestate control panel and wire this wire back to
the South Brisbane NCE Mini Panel. I had to re-write 3 inputs, and add a
link to set of common points as now I had 5 points in the diagram that needed
to be thrown for three track routes. By default you only can have 4
commands on each input on the Mini Panel. So the new coding was done, and
the changes also made. It was tested and it worked first time.
Amazing!
Earlier on Saturday, I went via the local hobby shop and
picked up another NCE QSnap point controller. I will use this to control
the two extra points I will connect up in Rocklea Yard, and I will also move a
pair of points (currently controlled by a n NCESnap-It) that allow a standard
gauge train to go from track 1 in Acacia Ridge Yard to the dual gauge
track. But by moving this function to my new QSnap, this gets more
utilised and I then end up with a spare Snap-It, which I am sure I will eventually
use somewhere else on the layout.
Today I wired up two point motors in Rocklea Yard back to my
existing NCE QSnap, and started on pre-laying wires for the next two point
motors (to the just purchased NCE QSnap) when I get some more point
motors. I then cut out the troublesome piece of track in The Risk
loop on the mainline, and relayed it with a new piece. A few trains have
now gone through this area and it looks like it is now running well. I
then resumed running trains on the layout, to reset the trains back to the
beginning of the timetable.
I ran about 13 trains day. One container train with
lots of 80 foot containers on it was giving me trouble entering Clapham
Yard. I checked one wagon to see if was bogie swing and realised that it
had a huge scale build up on the wheels. I then checked the rest of the
wagons on that train and they were just as bad as the first. So I spent
quite a bit of time, cleaning each wheel of each carriage on this train with a
track rubber. I then reran this train back into Clapham Yard and it did
not give me any more trouble. I have done this before, but it has really
been a long time between drinks for this wheel cleaning service. This is
the only train that I end up having to do this process to. I don’t know
if it something wrong with the wagons and the wheels on this train?
Next week I will move into writing my session
notes for the upcoming Modelling the Railways of Queensland Convention.
I’ve received an email tonight from the head guru advising that they need to be
completed by the end of next month. I also have to make two
dioramas. I better get my finger out.
No comments:
Post a Comment