Fixing Stuff Up, and Some Loco Tuning to Occur Next Week

This week, it has been back to fulltime work.  I did get away slightly early on Friday (if you call after 4:00pm early), a consequence of me being the acting boss for 5 weeks, as I could not knock off too early.  I did get to the shed and grab some wagons and a 1720 class (actually 1770 – James Cook) and got them ready to take to the Club on Saturday for a run.  When there I ran a small train of about 6 or 7 wagons around the 12mm.  The track there was dirty and my train could not run without running the track rubber in front of the train even though the track was also pushing a track cleaning car.  The track there needed a good oil with Wahl oil, but the club does not use that.  I do use the Wahl oil and I think my 12mm track runs sh!t tons better than the club layout.  Maybe it is the environment that the Club shed provides, with a huge roller door right next to the HO Club layout and all the dust and dirt coming in through that door.  I’m also certain that there will be many modellers that will say 'never oil your track', but I can certainly say that it helps with conductivity and there are plenty of articles about that discuss the types of solvents and oils to use on your layout that work.  Wahl oil is certainly one of the good ones.  I just need to buy another container of Wahl oil as mine is getting low.  It has taken a number of years to get down to this level, but I need to acquire another bottle.

The running on the Club track then identified that I had one KD coupler without a spring, one bogie screwed too tight and another wagon that had its couplers about 2mm too high.  The bogie screw issue was rectified at the Club, but the other issues were deferred to the Shed today.  Following actioning these few little tasks, I then decided that I needed to continue on from last week and build another two extra wooden steps for the train room.  This time for both corners of Clapham Yard.  So out came the saw, drill and screwdriver and voila – 2 more steps.  

After the work, I moved to the 'Play' part of the day.  I ran about 12 trains in the timetable and now the layout timetable is reset to 10:30am in the morning.  There are about 5 trains mid run in various locations around the layout and there are about 3 others that are due to start at exactly that time.  So whenever I eventually schedule the next session the layout is all ready to rock and roll.  I did notice that two wagons on one of my stock trains had skidded wheels as the train made its way around the layout today.  So this was fixed up.  I think these skidded wheels came about when I hit the bottom half of these wagons with my 'Frosted Glass' weathering spray can and maybe locked the wheels up.  These wagons do look good after a dose of that spray.

One thing I noticed today in the timetable is that two trains were scheduled to follow after each over and were actually two consecutive timetable cards in the timetable.  So I did a bit of a change and merged these two into a single train.  So I adjusted the timetable cards later this afternoon.  This is very similar to what I did over the last few weeks following good feedback from Anthony on the last running day.  So late this afternoon I actually completed adjusting the timetable cards sequence and everything will be ready for when the next lot of timetable cards are printed out, sometime later this year.

I also ordered a truck load of 44 class replacement gears during the week, and they will appear early next week.  So I know the first two locos that I will fix on my layout – 44100 and 4468, both in a bad way with wheels out of gauge and a huge clicking sound coming from them.  I have another couple of 44s also exhibiting some clicking but not as bad as these two.  Maybe 4498 will be close behind the first two locos.  I also noticed that one of my 48 class locos (an old powerline) has absolutely no traction whatsover.  I was pulling 5 wagons - mostly Camco ones.  I think its old traction tyres have gone hard after maybe being dipped in Wahl oil.  I will have to look at that next weekend.  I also have a section of track in Cassino Down Yard that has lost power.  It seems to get its power from a point blade and if I hold the point blade against the stock rail, trains move in that section.  So I must not have a power jumper from the actual track bus on that section.  Another job for next weekend to investigate and fix up.