On Monday I was cleaning all the point blades on entry to Acacia Ridge Yard from the south with a cotton bud dipped in Metho. I then tested all the points with the front four all working, but the 4 rear points were not. On Tuesday when I started tracing the wires to find their DS64 point controller, I had summised that the whole DS64 had lost power. When I found it, sure enough, a wire had been pulled out of the DCC input to the DS64. So that wire was restored and the DS64 checked and all four rear points were confirmed as working again. In my testing, I noticed that I had no power to Acacia Ridge Track 4. So that was put onto the list to be fixed later.
Feedback from the Ops Session last weekend from my North Coast Control Dispatcher, was my phone system needed a piezo buzzer to attract the attention of the North Coast Control when Grafton or Acacia Ridge is calling. So I found that I had one sitting in my Arduino Starter kit, so I tested it on Tuesday. It was installed into the phone circuit and eventually I got it working well. I had to change the value of a resistor within my phone system, so I could provide at least 3V DC to the Peizo buzzer to make it work. I went to my local Jaycar to pick up another Peizo buzzer on Tuesday arvo, but they did not have any – the shelves were bare. They advised that the next closest Jaycar had one. On Wednesday morning I went there and picked it up and tried to install it in the arvo. This version of the Peizo forces you to use the third terminal on it. It has some other electronics on the board and is different to the first one I used. But I just wired the V and S pins to my positive power supply and the Base pin to the negative/ground terminal. It only took about 15 minutes and I had the call switch working from North Coast Control to Grafton Yard and Acacia Ridge Yard.
Tuesday arvo I did some testing of the Rocklea Siding area. I made up a list of things to attack. I needed to re-solder some cold solder joins and also cleaned the point blades. I got around to this on Thursday afternoon. I had a set of points that was not supplying power properly through the point blades, so I attached a jumper between the rails of the point. That solved the problem. But running a loco through the blades caused issues on one route. I could not work out the cause. So I packed the rails on one side and that solved the problem. I found out the reason why I had no power on track 4 of Acacia Ridge Yard. It was the perennial problem where I installed a set of points and never jumpered around the points. So I added jumpers and now trains run there as well. I have ticked off most of my to do list items, except that I had not run trains through the 12mm trackage at Rocklea Sidings. Maybe this coming week.
Also earlier in the week, I noticed that three above track point motors in Rocklea Siding had their actuator come adrift from the point. So I added a dab of super glue to the actuator and the side knob of the point. When I went back on the next day, the points had stuck hard with the super glue. Within a few minutes on using a knife on the point, I had freed up the actuators. All three point are now working from the various control panels.
On Friday I went to Jaycar again to pick up some wire so I was laying a track bus for the Sunnybank branch. I have started laying the bus, but as yet I have not soldered any jumpers to the track. Plenty of time this coming week for that.
Darren and I car pooled to Anthony’s place on Saturday for Operations Session number 69 on his layout. It was a blast with 9 people in attendance.
On Sunday Darren and I, but this time joined by Glen, car pooled down to the Gold Coast to help Marty work on his layout. Again we had a ball. Marty put on some snags on bread with onions for lunch. Although I'm not sure how much work Marty did. He spent most of the morning looking for his cutoff blade knife. We joked about Harper having it. Sure enough she did.
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