I had reason to head to the shed on Sunday evening after I posted my weekly blog for last week. I had a comment from one operator that he was derailing inside Bonalbo Ballast Siding while shunting. So I did a bit of investigation. There is a catch point inside the siding, just inside the main gate of the siding. The catch point operates in tandem with the mainline points, via a manual point throw. I think the operator did not throw this point as they were working their train. As I had removed my ballast plough from this train (and had not yet returned it), and thus the train only had a single van at one end, the operator (living in the 70’s or 80’) was moving the train’s van to the other end of the train before hitting the main line and running his train from Bonalbo to Old Cassino. So I think I can close off the issue with the points at this location. I think it was operator error.
So on Monday while watching the cricket, I went to the shed and removed the 4 light support posts that I added the day before. These were then moved to other positions, inside my access hole inside my layout access blob on that peninsular. I then started to look at the point at the southern end of Cassino that directs traffic from the Loop to Cassino Yard. This wire in tube operated point keeps coming out of the Peco point hole. So I eventually put the wire back inside the point and then adjusted the wire under the layout. We will see if I have fixed this issue long term.
On Tuesday I started on adding a point motor to another set of points at Cassino, that were previously manually controlled. This time on the southern end of Cassino for the Main Line to Back Platform Road set of points. This was previously also controlled via a wire in tube operation. It took a while but I did it. I tried to do it on the cheap, but placing the point motor where the manual throw was. But it would not throw the point given that it was actually coming from a 45 degree angle. So I had to climb under the layout, put a new throw rod in, attached it under the layout in a piece of conduit and then mounted the point motor upside down attached to the layout baseboard and also with the throw rod attached to that. It works. There is a bit of stickiness when I throw the point back to the mainline, but if you push the button twice it throws.
On Tuesday evening a few of us got together on Discord. There was a suggestion from Geoff about my Operations Manual. So I included a bit of an update and he said that was OK. So another enhancement done.
The main task that I had to get around too, but was putting off, was fixing the point motor that was not throwing at Dutton Park for the standard gauge point to send trains to either South Brisbane Interstate, or Fisherman Islands Yard. I am struggling about what to do. So I decided to swap out the standard gauge point motor. That meant unsoldering the wires from the old point motor and removing the old point motor and base. That worked better, but still not consistently.
In the meantime, I was installing the point motor on the point for the narrow gauge trackage at the same Dutton Park location. This was installed, wired back to my point controller and given a test and worked first time. Sometimes you get lucky. This has also been wired into the indicator light next to the standard gauge indicator light. These show the direction of these points are set as they are up high and their direction cannot be determined from ground level when operating a train.
Later in the week, I did a bit of work on the re-testing of my Shelton the Photographer test bed. I have my Arduino based version working. I have started installing the power supply for the Arduino under the layout and also including an on/off switch to give Shelton some time off. I might get around to installing that animation sometime this coming week. I also did some maintenance work on some wooden stumps for my case shed at the Old Cassino Shell Siding. I really need to get stuck in and finish that area will all the piping for the oil tank unloading.
When the cricket started, I did very little in the shed. I just watched the cricket on TV. I did a few things after stumps. These last couple of days I have been looking after my narrow gauge passengers. When I install a station platform I use 42 x 19 pine as the platform. In order to get the passenger carriages to the correct height at the platform, you need to use some 3mm cork under the track. However, none of my 12mm track will be corked (as I have none left), none of that area will be sceniced. I did however, cut some 3mm styrene strips to place under the track at South Brisbane, Yeerongpilly and Park Road stations. South Brisbane station's styrene has been installed and completed and trains tested through the platforms. This looks good.
I will spend some time this week moving about 8 trains along in the timetable and that will advance the fast clock about 2 hours. There is a mini-Operations Session this coming Friday.
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