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.