Track Laying Continues

On Monday we travelled back from Armidale towards Brisbane.  First stop was the bakery at Glen Innes and then to Rohan’s place to check out on progress on his layout.  We actually picked up Rohan from his business just out of town and took him home.  A few of our group had not seen this magic layout and were gobsmacked.  This layout continues to get better.  A great way to lose lots of time, is watching trains on Rohan’s layout and checking out his fantastic scenery.

Tuesday was a trip to my local Bob Jane T-Mart to book in the car.  I picked up a screw in my travels the week before our Armidale Trip and it played havoc with us.  I had to fill the tyre up each day.  Wednesday it was fixed.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I completed all the track work at Rocklea Siding and have been running narrow gauge and standard gauge trains through the area for a shake down.

On Thursday I started work on the relaying of the Fisherman Islands branch and adding benchwork from Park Road to Dutton Park.  I made a trip to Bunnings for another sheet of 12mm ply on Friday.  Before lunch I cut in the north fork of the Wye from Fisherman Islands Branch to Park Road.  On Thursday it dawned on me that I needed to add an auto reverser to the section from Dutton Park north to South Brisbane.  I think I will wire all the trackwork north of the wye points onto the auto-reverser (when I buy one).  That way I only have one train entering the reversing section and it is long enough for my longest narrow gauge train.  I was thinking on putting the auto-reverser in the small leg from the points between Fisherman Islands and the points at Park Road.  But I could have a train longer than that section.  Alternatively I could have made the whole Fisherman Islands Power district an autoreverser, but I could have many locos sitting in that section.  I thought electrically, it would be simpler making the Park Road to South Brisbane narrow gauge section the auto reversing section.

It was very wet in the afternoon of Friday so I did not go to the shed.  I just watched the cricket on TV.  Saturday I went to Jaycar and bought some wire for the bus for Dutton Park to South Brisbane narrow gauge section.  I then installed that bus for the auto reversing section.  At the moment, the power is controlled via a DPDT switch set to either Dutton Park, or Fisherman Island on the panel.  I also relayed the track from Fisherman Islands back out to Dutton Park.  I also laid the track from Fisherman Islands to Park Road and installed the northern leg of the wye.  So in theory I can now run a narrow gauge train from South Brisbane to Fisherman Islands. 

So on Sunday afternoon, I ran that test train.  However, when I turned on the track power I had a short in the newly laid section.  I traced back some wires, and sure enough, I had attached the track feeders to the wrong bus wire on the last wires I connected.  So these were swapped and I then ran a train from South Brisbane to Fisherman Islands.  I realised that I need to attach a few more feeders around the Fisherman Islands branch as I had removed some of the old dual gauge track which had power feeders attached.  But I have trains running.

I then added some extra benchwork through Dutton Park to take the extra narrow gauge tracks.  At this stage the relaying of the track through Dutton Park is next on the to-do list.  That is maybe Monday or Tuesday’s job.

This is the new narrow gauge trackwork at the northern end of the wye from Park Road to Fisherman Islands.

This is the other end of that wye connection at the Fisherman Islands branch.  The narrow gauge crosses over the standard gauge at this point.

Turning to the left, we see the two tracks that now go into Fisherman Islands Yard.  Originally these two tracks joined up just outside the yard and were dual gauge towards Dutton Park and all teh way to Clapham Yard.

The remaining section.  This is the old Dutton Park junction, which will not be two tracks in each direction.  This will be relayed next week.

I am also working on the wiring diagram if I ever get around to removing the staff sections from Grafton Yard to Rappville and Rappville to Cassino.  These sections would be replaced with a CTC panel monitored from a laptop used by North Coast Control.  I would also remove the head set plug in points at those locations.  To do this I need to build about 14 or so track detectors.  I would also have to ensure that the first, last and middle wagons on every train are fitted with wheels sets with resistors, so that they will cause the track circuiting to pick up the locations of any trains in this area.  This will be a mammoth task, but that is a job for the whole of 2025.  I would also have to buy a stack of signals to be installed at all the crossing loops at this location.