Another Weekend Lost

This weekend I was summoned to a Operations Session at Wattle Flat on the Saturday and was there with Garry (my driver – I was his second person), Brendan and Geoff, and Jack (his first ops session) paired with the owner Darren.  It was also Garry’s first Ops Session at Darren’s.  Garry is a US outline modeller and not a NSW modeller.  But he did really well.  He is also a Digitrax DCC man and had not used NCE before today.  You can teach an old dog new tricks.

The session was great.  Each crew ran 4 trains each.  An initial out and back and then after a short mid-session sustenance break, we ran another two trains again an out and a back.  Our first train was a mixed.  It required a huge amount of shunting at its destination, placing all the cars at their intended locations, and then picking up all the wagons heading back the other way.  This return train just gets left in the yard, and put away by Darren.

After the break, we were put on the ballast.  This comes off the main into the yard, where we have to share with the location with a crew doing shunting.  We need to move the guards van from one end to the other, as we need to review and head down the branch.  We take the staff and our train which consists of a load of empty ballast wagons, and a plough and a few more wagons to the ballast siding half way in the staff section.  These 6 empty ballast wagons are placed in the siding, while 6 full wagons are pulled from the loader and added to our train.  We then continue to the staff section location and have to place two empty WSC sleeper wagons and a MLE with loads of rail on it, into the perway siding.  We have to pick up two loaded sleeper wagons and an empty MLE.  There is also another sleeper wagon in the siding, that needs to be moved and put back when we are finished.  We then need to put the guards van back on the rear and head back to the junction station on the main line.  Here we need to end for end the guards van again, and this time for good measure we also put the ballast plough on the end as well.  We then proceeded back on the mainline towards Dubbo.

A great about 2 and a half hours operating, not counting lunch and our sustenance break.

Today I went out with the boss and picked up a couple of cartons of beer and used my son’s discount card.  That was $5 that was better in my pocket than the liquor place.  Upon returning home and having lunch, a mate from work came over with two of his very cute grandchildren.  They came to see the layout.  They had a great time.  They ran a train around, picked out some of the scenes, like a clown climbing an a bridge, a Yowie, a motor bike crash, lots of other animals and various flashing lighting effects.  Dave’s main reason for visiting was to drop of some of his father’s memorabilia that he wanted to get rid of.  It included a steam pressure gauge, some old engine driver oil cans, a few framed prints, lots of train DVDs, many books, and some old metal signs.  He used to be Curator at the Redback museum before he retired.

I will find somewhere in the shed to display these items. 

So because of these activities, I did not progress any work on my Arduino program rewrite for Shelton the Photographer.  Hopefully next week.

Last of my Scheduled Events

As this weekend rolled around, another full weekend of fun and frivolity was scheduled and it unfolded.  It all actually started on Tuesday night when we visited Barnacle’s place.  The bugger has installed one of my filing cabinets in his local fish retail shop on the wharf at Mosquito Creek.  In through the office window, you could see a female staff worker standing in front of the filing cabinet with the second from the top draw opened and her hands diving into it.  No doubt filing some invoices.  We actually got to see the long lost member of the crew – Shelton who had been in Melbourne for many months – maybe 6 months.  With him, back maybe people will pick on me less and more on him - Hey PK?

Saturday was the NMRA meeting.  Darren and Craig came to my place and I drove them to the meeting on the other side of the city.  We parked outside PK’s place, and went in and had a chat.  He was installing a decoder and keep alive into Kyle’s QR loco before the meeting.  We all worked around the corner, for maybe 100m maybe 120m to Bob’s place.  The meeting was well attended.  Bob had a layout in his garage and it had DCC on the HO trackage and DC on his 12mm QR trackage.  For the meeting we had three great presentations and a very good informative meeting.

On Sunday it was a Buy and Sell Day at the RMCQ Clubrooms.  About 50 tables were sold and the BBQ guys were going full chat for the whole morning.  I left home early to get my usual reserved table just outside the clubrooms.  I had my most successful day in selling stuff at this Buy and Sell.  We also saw some grain stuff, that we might have acquired for Mr Wuiske for his layout.  Next time we see him, we will hand it over either to him in person, or to one of his minions at an upcoming exhibition.  I also picked up a couple of items myself for a fair price.  There was lots of stuff that was there that I was slightly tempted into acquiring, but I held out.  It also appears that I was just a couple of minutes too slow in picking up a NCE Powercab for an absolute bargain.   Darren beat me to it.  And I gave him a lift the day before.  he needs to look after his older mates.

So now, I should be able to spend sometime next weekend actually doing some modelling tasks, instead of full weekend attending events.  I do need to build about another 25 pallets and also I had an order for some 3 cubic meter industrial bins.  I will have all of these by the next Club Meeting.  I should be able to spend some time working on Barnacle Bob's Arduino project next weekend as well.

Catching Up

Friday the week before at about 11:00am I took my gear over to the Brisbane Model Railway Exhibition to setup.  I picked up Arthur on Saturday morning and took him to the Show.  Arthur was sitting next to on Saturday doing some modelling.  I purchased a few modelling items.  This included a magnifying visor, and some wagon gates.  During the day while sitting at the modelling desk with Arthur, I built some filing cabinets where the draws could open.

On Sunday morning I picked up Barnacle Bob and gave him a lift to the show.  Bob was my Sunday table mate.  He was doing some painting on some models and some scale people.  I purchased a few more items on Sunday and I got to have another look around the layouts and shops for some inspiration.

Model train shows are great events.  You get to catch up with all of your old mates you haven’t seen since the last exhibition.  You get to put a face to a name or to a person on Facebook or Blog Land.  It was a great event.  So during the weekend I got to catch up with lots of people.  I did a little modelling work, made some people smile and I had a ball.

On Sunday afternoon, I think we were first out of the shed.  We took out first load of stuff out to the pickup area across the road from the building.  I then set up Bob on a seat to act as a guard and watch over the stuff and then I made three more trips.  We were out of the hall by 4:15pm.  I then got the car, parked in the pickup area, loaded the car, loaded Bob and we were off at 4:20pm.  Everyone else was struggling to get their cars into the building, to pack up.

This week, I received an order from PK who visited me in at work between meetings.  It was some Kadee HO brake rigging sets and a packet of KDs.  I fitted one pair of KD brake rigging to one of my HO wagons, and then thought about 'how could I affix another pair of HO brake rigging to a 12mm wagon?'.  So I got the modelling knife out and cut about 4mm out from the middle of the rigging and then used styrene glue to glue the two pieces (less the 4mm in the centre) then back together again.  Almost a week later they seem to have glued back together fairly solidly.  I am yet to fit them to a 12mm bogie, but that is a job for a night next week.

Friday evening this week I was supposed to attend a modelling evening but I had a cold that was slowly getting better but I decided to not attend.  On Saturday though, I did attend the 50^th operating session of Anthony Palmer’s Border District Layout.  This session was split between the morning session and afternoon session with a shared lunch in between.  I attended the afternoon session, and resumed operating Malcolm Jenkin’s trains as SAR#2 (the second roster for the South Australian Railway Driver of the layout).  I can only remember one incident being chastised (getting a bung) for not marshalling a branch line train correctly.  I did not see that one Dwf wagon was supposed to be marshalled behind the loco - according to the wagons cards as this was where the 'outofs' were being carried.  I had it as second wagon, behind another Dwf wagon.  Only the cruel overlord of layout operations (Anthony Palmer) would have picked that up, and I’m sure he was lurking ready to pounce once this train left the branchline terminus, and the train got to Border Junction where the 'outof' loading/unloading activity was to occur.

This was my first experience for about 3 years at operating this layout.  A few improvements have been made and it was a pleasure to operate and a great day with friends.

Pre-Brisbane Model Railway Exhibition

On last Sunday evening I tested a loco and while I could get all the lighting functions to run, I could not get the loco to move.  I could not read anything from the decoder on the programming track.  I know I installed the lighting functions of F1 and F2, but I had no idea what model and brand of decoder it was, as I could not read it back on the Programming track.  From looking at the decoder I also could not tell what brand and model it was.  I had had enough with this decoder,  So I was about to rip it out and replaced it with an NCE D13SRJ that I had lying around. 

On Monday morning (a public holiday in Queensland) I went over to Aurora Trains to see what they had in the Kerroby range, as George had advertising during the last week that they now had this line of detail items.  While I was there, a couple of guys came in and spent some money.  I had a good chat to Anatol.  I was discussing the issue of my stubborn loco.  I thought about this issue some more.  I thought that it had to be a cold solder joint on one of the wires to the motor.  I did a test again with a 9V battery to the motor.  It worked.  I then tried to follow one of the wires up to the decoder and touch the battery connection there.  It would not go.  So I decided to hit the motor connection with the soldering iron again.  Guess what?  The 9V battery was now powering the motor from the decoder.  So I took it back to the shed and gave it a further test on the programming track and then the layout.  It was now going back and forth on the track.  I adjusted the momentum figure down and while pretty noisy, it was running reasonably.  The loco was put back into its consist with a dummy loco, also a reverse 442 class and together they look pretty nice.

I also washed down a couple of tables, before I put them in the back of my car for the Model Train Show on the weekend just gone.  After lunch I packed up a few items to take to the exhibition as well.

In the leadup to the Brisbane Model Railway Exhibition, we had Geoff, Geoff, Darren come over to provide some traffic on the layout for Tyler to get an idea of what it is like to enjoy a kaos filled Ops session.  Glen forgot to come over.

Before the crew turned up, Tyler presented and I gave him a tour around the layout.  I had previously sent him my training manual.  Tyler who currently lives in Tasmania, was in town for the Brisbane Model Train Show this last weekend.  So what better excuse than to run a train or two or three, over a couple of hours.

It started off with the trains moving very slowly, if at all.  That was a problem.  The control panel showed no shorts, full voltage, but every loco was only just moving.  So I decided to go to the old trouble solution.  I turned off the layout amp meter, and guess what?  Full power to the track returned, and trins could run.

There were a couple of issues.  While I have run a few trains back and forth since the last Ops Session in December last year, basically nothing has really run on the layout since.  There were a couple of uncouplings, a couple of derailments.  I will address each of these bit by bit next weekend.  I had a loose track wire that has since been fixed.  I’m a bit pre-occupied this weekend, with the Brisbane train show.