Planning For Loads of Loads

Well activities have been a bit slow this week.  But we did start off with Tuesday Nighter’s at my place this week. Nine (9) guys came over for a walk around the shed and a chat and supper in the pergola. There was lots of interesting conversations going on. 

I did venture to a hobby shop to buy some styrene yesterday morning so I can make up some more steel load for the May show.  On Saturday I cut up most of that styrene for the loads.  There were lots of ‘I’, ‘H’ and ‘T’ beams, square sections and thick slab sections.  I already have quite a number of thin slabs of steel plat section already painted and weathered.  For the various tube and rod shapes I also cut up lots of lengths.  These are arranged into stackable bundles.  All are now ready to send to the paint shop.  That is a job for an upcoming weekend.  I have four left to choose from.

I also had a plan to also make some bundles of reo bar out of some steel wire ties that I had already cut to length.  I made 8 of these today and tied them with 28 gauge wire and then hit them with super glue to bind them all together.

I was also investigating where I can get some detail parts like decals, brake hose pipes, various sized brake wheels and other types of wheels, as well as other items that I can put on a couple of models as I work towards 4 super detailed models for my Master Builder of Cars – AP.

I thought I was going to be son less for the first part of this week, but his school camp has today been postponed until later in the year.  The school was down quite a few teachers and could not have them both at school and on camps.  What probably made matters a bit worse, was that the years 12s were also split between 5 different locations across SEQ, as there is about 280 of them altogether.  So now he has to sleep in his own bed and go to school Monday to Wednesday this week, instead of having a bit of a bludge before school holidays start later in the week.  

Don't Tell My Mates!

So on Friday evening Arthur came over for a visit and brought over Merv, who happened to be staying in Brisbane for the Saturday NMRA meeting.  Merv who is a NSW modeller, had not seen my layout previously.  So he was given a tour.  I thought I would give Arthur a demo of my newly replaced dual gauge point at the Northern end of Acacia Ridge Yard.  I ran a narrow gauge train and standard gauge train through the main route with no issues.  I then changed the point so the standard gauge loco could take the siding.  The loco ran into the dirt.  Just like the Thursday night northbound steel train through Casino in Northern NSW.  Anyway I looked at the points and one of the point rails had become separated from the throw bar.  So the point rail did not throw.  Damn!  I just cannot win with these points at this location.  Just don't tell my mates!

Anyway I finally got around to fixing (i.e. re-soldering) the point rail on Sunday afternoon.  I even ran some trains of both gauges through the points.  And yes it did work.  I will again attempt to demonstrate a success traversing of this set of points to Arthur on Tuesday night when the guys come over for our fortnightly meeting.

Just back tracking a bit to Friday night, when I mentioned to Arthur, that real trains do derail at Casino, like the steel train on Thursday night.  So I am just representing the same prototypical accuracy on my layout.  He just laughed and said with a big grin on his face - 'That they happen every 4 or 5 years on the prototype and every day on your layout'.

So on Saturday we went to Paul’s place, our new Div 1 Superintendent, for our March NMRA  Meeting.  After the meeting at which myself and Arthur both gave some powerpoint presentations, we got to view a couple of NSW coaches in Paul's back yard.  One happens to be a NSW FAM that spent most of its time on the Gold Coast Motorail and the other coach was a PHN I think.  We got to get a tour through the FAM.  I might have taken a few photos or 50.  The plan is for these to be refurbed as private vehicle to be able to run on the standard gauge network. 

Also today another set of scratch built dual gauge points also in Acacia Ridge Yard had a point rail also come adrift from the throw bar.  So I guess there has been some temperature changes in the shed and this is causing an issue with movement.  The troublesome point blade was resoldered and tested.

I also noticed that one of my flickering LEDs in a fire scene was not working.  So I replaced that LED and the fire is now back working.  Another item to show off on Tuesday night.

I did not get around to installing the set of replacement dual gauge points for Dutton Park.  I might put that project off until after the May Model Railway Exhibition up here in Brisbane.  I will need to spend some time working on the preparation of some of my items I require for the May Show.  I also had a phone call during the week asking about upgrading my Level crossing program that runs on an Arduino, to work on a section of track with two bi-directional tracks.  Currently this program will work on two uni-directional tracks, and a single bi-directional track.  This upgrade requires that I need to use a few more pins in the Arduino, so quite a few changes will be required.  I will need 8 pins for level crossing detectors – 4 per track, another for a reset switch, another 4 pins for the level crossing flashers, and another for a pin to signify either dual track standard up/down working, or single track bi-directional working,.  I will need another pin for the dual track bi-directional configuration as well.

I highly doubt that the effort will justify the reward.  But I think it can be done.  I have already changed the code to adjust the location of what pins the flashing lights use.  I will keep looking at this.

Preparing a Presentation

Plenty on this week, but not much ‘Shed’ related.  On Friday we had a party in town to attend for a guy that we have worked with for about the last 13 years moving on.  That was really nice.  Yesterday was club meeting day.  I had some good conversations with the guy sat the Club.  But the most important thing to do this week was to pick up some sheets of Slaters Flemish Bond styrene sheet.  Well actually second most important.  The most important was to head over to my son’s school and attend his Year 12 Commissioning Ceremony starting at midday which followed by a light lunch for the parents and year 12s.  Then at 3:30pm we were back again at the school to attend an Academic Achievers afternoon tea for Semester 2 last year.  As I usually say, we had some $1000 muffins at this event.  So eventually by the end of the year, we will get our yearly school fees back in $1000 muffins.

The non-shed work I was doing this week was preparing a powerpoint presentation for next weekend’s NMRA meeting.  So that was started on maybe Wednesday evening this week, and it is now finished.  I spent plenty of time on it on Saturday evening and again this morning.  Hopefully it will go over quite well.  Who knows, if it does, it might get suggested to be put up for an upcoming NMRA-X presentation.

The other activity I started late this morning while watching some women’s Rugby League was starting to cut up about 80 tarpaulins.  There is another presentation next weekend at the NMRA meeting by Arthur Hayes, and I thought I might take some sheets of tarps along for members to make their own rolled up tarps after Arthur's talk. 

I have not been able to get motivated to put the new set of dual gauge points into Dutton Park this week.  Maybe next week.

This is the dual gauge set of points to replace the existing set at Dutton Park.  The straight route goes past Park Road Siding to South Brisbane Interstate, while the diverging route goes to Fisherman Islands.

These are the newly installed set of dual gauge points from last week that allows a standard gauge train on the main coming into Acacia Ridge Yard from the south on the standard gauge to go to the dual gauge track.

This is the dual gauge set of points that allows a standard gauge train to enter Rocklea Sidings.  The track in front of the points is the narrow gauge track into Rocklea Sidings.

This is the dual gauge points at the southern end of Acacia Ridge Yard.  I replaced the actuator bar with a piece of PC board.  The DPDT switch throws the points.

This is the outer end of Fisherman Islands yard.  The right hand dual gauge point replaced an old set and the left hand set, allows an additional narrow gauge siding in the yard.

Ticking of Tasks From the To Do List

Well another trying week in our neck of the woods.  We did a few loads of washing for my daughter’s boyfriend’s family.  We let him stay here for a few nights, as they had no power at their place, although their home was above the flood line, it was just an isolated island right in the middle of one of the flood zones.

I still was able to visit the hobby shop one day during the week and picked up another Peco point motor, point motor base and a couple of cans of paint.  The paint was put to good use as I painted up 40 pallets in Chep blue.  I also painted up 15 clothes lines.  I also got stuck in and painted up about 33 tea bags that will allow me to make up 66 tarpaulins during this coming week.

I did get to the shed on the weekend, but boy was it hot and humid.  I swapped the wires on a point motor to Rocklea Siding and adjusted the throw, and this Peco point motor on a dual gauge point works every time now.  I’m very happy.  I spliced in the replaced dual gauge point into the dual gauge at Acacia Ridge and it has a standard gauge connection from the southern entry of Acacia Ridge Yard, to the dual gauge in Acacia Ridge.  This replaced an old Peco point that I superglued a third rail through.  This new dual gauge point was also connected up to the newly purchased point motor and point motor base.  The base is used to provide the over centre locking of the point.  I also added an omega spring from a paper clip.  The point motor was tested late this arvo.  It works like a bought one.  Another success.  I was having trouble with an NCE QSnap not having power.  It was located right below this newly upgraded point.  It turned out was just a wire had come adrift from the track bus power supply.  So that was fixed with the soldering iron and all seems to be well. 

I also investigated a point motor in Clapham Yard on the narrow gauge for the entry into Rocklea siding.  A close inspection shows that two wires had come adrift.  Once I re-soldered those two wires, it was working very well.  I also found a wire had come adrift from my control panel for Rocklea Siding.  This was fixed and that is back in the world of working.

There is another point in Clapham Yard – also narrow gauge, that does not seem to be getting enough umph to cause it to throw.  I will get to that next week hopefully, as well as look at the Dutton Park dual gauge point to be replaced.  While running a test train around Acacia Ridge on the dual gauge tracks, I realised that the set of points I put in last week, caused a lack of electrons to flow on track 1 if this point was set to the curve position – forming a crossover from track 1 to the dual gauge track.  Ask me how I worked that out.  My train stopped running when I had this arrangement set today.  So I added a track power jumper and all is now good. 

I think I will try and make another 25 or 50 Pallets over the next week or two.  It is always good to have some of these in your back pocket, considering I sold 40 of these on Saturday.

We will be having our first Tuesday Nighters for about 6 weeks this coming Tuesday.  Barnacle has done some more work on his layout.  It will be great to see progress.