Operations Session Clean Up

Following last Sunday's Operations Session on Cassino, I took the opportunity to look at enhancing some things around the layout and then looked at a couple of locos that might have had issues.

My Tillig dual gauge point at the northern end of Acacia Ridge Yard always causes locos to stutter heading through it.  When running a consist this did not cause any issues, but when there is only a single loco this can cause a complete stall.  I cleaned the point blades with methylated spirits and a cotton bud and soldered a joiner at the toe end of the point to assist with electrical flow.  The other end is made up of all insulated joiners as this is the start of the next power district.  I have since run a couple of standard gauge locos through it in all directions and they all now performed well.  I also ran a couple of narrow gauge locos through the straight track and they also ran well.  Maybe I have fixed the issue.

Next stop was a point at the other end of Acacia Ridge Yard in track 1.  That particular point had bad electrical connectivity from the point blades so I added a permanent jumper from the diverging rail to the straight rail and now that works so much better after my tests.

Late on last Sunday I was testing the SX set hauled by the Golden Holden and it just stopped short of the section where the mainline from Acacia Ridge, the branch from Sunnybank and the lead into Rocklea Sidings all diverge.  A length of track that I installed for Sunnybank was second hand and was as dirty as sin.  So on Monday it was given a cleaning and then I ran my SX set forward and back through this junction in all directions and performance was satisfactory.  That train has not travelled too much farther as the set is sitting in Clapham Yard.

I then tried to check out an Auscision loco - number 44236.  It stopped dead while Arthur was running No 19A on last Sunday.  I could not get it to move.  But I did not try checking CV19 so see if it magically joined a consist.  I checked that later and that was not the cause.  So it left me with the only thing to do was to pull it apart and check the wires to the motor.  It looks like the motor is stuffed.  I removed the motor and applied DC direct to the motor and it does not spin.  I will have to try and get a replacement motor from Auscision.

A scan of South Brisbane Interstate (SBI) Station on Monday showed that it was in a complete mess.  OMG!  It was a complete cluster …  I had no idea where to start fixing up what was wrong.  Well the Sugar wagons should have been in Acacia Ridge Yard road 3, but were in SBI road 10.  So I ran them back.  The three wagons that should have been in SBI road 10 were in SBI road 3.  So I moved them into road 10.  Next step was to move the rest of the wagons in SBI road 3 into Park Road Siding road 2.  I noticed on Sunday that something was wrong with Park Road station, as I was supposed to do a shunt there and there was nothing in the yard.  I was supposed to add my train’s container wagons with those wagons in road 2 at Park Road Yard, but they were not there.  I think this was a left over from the last iteration of the timetable and I did not pick this up earlier.  But because of this train being at South Brisbane, the driver of the Brisbane Limited could not put that train in road 3 at SBI.  So they put it in road 2.  That was going to cause all sorts of issues as SBI road 2 is used to run around all incoming trains in SBI and that wasn’t going to occur with a train sitting in it.

So this took me about 3 hours to do, but I had fun.  I have since added quite a lot of detail to a number of Shunt Lists, to assist crews in the future.  I will spend some timeethis coming week working out where we are in the timetable for the next session.  I might back track some trains.

One item that I forgot about from the Ops Session and it probably caused us one of the most troublesome issues from the Ops Session was that the point from the Main to the Yard in Cassino near the signal box had failed.  I forgot to look at this until late on Tuesday night when I remembered about the issue.  On Wednesday morning, I used my PROCAB-R handheld to throw the points in that region individually.  They all belong to a single DS64 point controller.  I started at address 421, 422 and 423 and they all worked.  Address 424 did not.  Additionally, when I tried to enter this address the DS64 did not respond.  So it looked like that the DS64 had lost its address in output 4.  So I had to re-enter the addresses from 421 to 424 into the DS64.  Once done, I entered 424 as the accessory number on the PROCAB-R and sure enough it worked.  This is one of the very, very few times that I had lost an address in a DS64 point controller.

I have circled back to the Cassino Station Building.  I had previously found two SPDT switch to use in the controlling of the lights in Cassino Station Building and the Refreshment Rooms.  A third switch found lying around will allow me to separately control the station master office lights.  This was wired up and tested and looks good.

The other week I put my 3D printed DH, that I got from Barnacle, next to the Far North Model DH.  The 3D printed version with a motor chassis that I put together had the DH shell sitting very high.  I set about working on the chassis and removing some styrene.  After a short work period, the 3D version has come down by close to 5mm in height.  It is just a bit high, but so much better.  I really need to get around in making my other Far North Hobbies DH that I purchased a few years back now, as I have a real working DH template to work from.

Saturday involved a trip to Anthony’s place to act as the Station Master at Tatiara Downs for his Operations Session.  I worked with Alan as my shunter and Iain as West End.  I have not been the so called ‘Sheriff’ since the first few sessions I worked at Tatiara Downs.  That is about 25 sessions ago.  This is a stressful position.  I think I struggled by and everything got done.  I forgot to swap a Guards van wagon card on one train, and 'The Real Sheriff' (Brendan – who was out on the mainline running trains for a change) chastised me as his train cards were in the wrong order.  I just had it arranged back to front instead of front to back.  We had a great time in a operating session lasting about 3 hr 10 minutes.  I needed a rest after that session.

More Layout Progress and Ops Session

So I went to the shed on Monday afternoon and continued wiring the track power bus on the Sunnybank branch.  At one point I thought I would turn the power to the layout on, and you guessed it, I had a short somewhere in the power district I was wiring up.  Surely I could not have wired a dropper to the wrong side of the track power bus.  I surveyed the whole power district and found a loco sitting on a set of points, that got thrown in the layout start up sequence.  So I changed the points back and tested the power district again.  Still a short.  I was pulling a full 1.5 Amps in that power district.  I had another glance at the work I had just done, and there it was, right in front of me, I had wired one jumper to the wrong rail.  Bugger!

So on Tuesday morning I unsoldered the wrongly connected power jumper, and reconnected it to the correct rail.  I could not resist the temptation to give the power district a test and sure enough it no longer had a short.  I then continued on with the laying of the bus wire for the track power to the end of the Sunnybank branch.  After lunch I then added the jumper wires from the bus to the track in about 7 places.  I then ran my scratch built 2050 QR railmotor up and down the siding at Sunnybank.  I also tested another 2000 class railmotor on the siding and it ran well.  My other 2000 class railmotor would not run.  Maybe I forgot its number, but I thought I numbered them after the birth years of my kids.  I did get around to checking the address later in the week and it was one year from the number I thought as this railmotor had a van, so it was an odd number.  I then put a sound equipped 1460 on the track and backed it onto my SX set in Sunnybank platform.  It sounds good.  My plan was for running that from Sunnybank to South Brisbane later this week but when I did, it stopped just short of the crossovers near Rocklea Siding.  I will check that out next week.

Tuesday evening we went to Glen’s place for our fortnightly meeting.  Numbers were good.  I think we had 14 in attendance and after all piling into Glen’s Shed to watch a couple of trains circulate around the layout, we sat in his outdoor deck in the cool air and had a very nice supper.  Plenty of conversations were occurring.  PK picked up a QR DH from Barnacle.  This transaction caught my eye.

With my house being vacated by the boss, I put a roll of paper on the kitchen floor again and corrected last week’s issue with the point layout in the sidings on the future exhibition layout.  I did two iterations to get the correct flow on the standard gauge crossover.

This is the correct layout of the sidings.

I have worked out my next job on the layout.  I am revisiting the Cassino Station building.  I am installing the internal lighting.  So on Thursday arvo, I drilled two holes through the baseboard and wired these to a power supply via an on/off switch on the fascia.  This power supply runs all the lighting effects in the Cassino region, platform lights, street lights and car lights.  The other end was connected up through the holes and into the two wire runs I have in my station building.  I tested with a single LED and it worked from the power supply.  So I went ahead and wired up 10 LEDs which will appear under the platform awning in the station building.  I have also installed wires which will go to the refreshment rooms next to the station building and have these controlled from a separate on/off switch on the fascia.  I moved the roof of the station building to the platform, and turned the lights on, and you can see them through the roof.  I need to paint it next week.

Saturday was a trip with a car full of north side people to the NMRA meeting west of Ipswich.  There were three good presentations and a viewing of Greg’s layout.  The engine shed had operating doors.  I received a phone call from Barnacle a couple of days earlier and he asked if I wanted to buy a QR DH.  I said yes and Saturday was the day when the transaction took place.  When I got home from the meeting, I took it to the shed and tested it on DC.  It ran very well.  I placed it next to my 3D printed DH and Bob's version sits a lot lower on the track.  So it looks like I will spend time next week lowering my 3D printed DH to the same height as the one I picked up from Barnacle.  I also found one of my spare decoders, so after I pulled the new DH apart, I realised that the decoder will not fit inside.  I will need a very small N scale decoder, or a Z scale decoder.  

Saturday night I joined the people on the British Region 'Brew and Natter' for a couple hours of interesting discussion.

Today I had an Ops Session on the layout and we had Shelton join us.  He had not been there running trains for 5 years and 4 months.  He did a good job and provided us with some photos below.  We had a new operator as well.  Paul on Div 1 Super was here.  He found an error in the timetable, which has gone unnoticed for quite some time, so I have fixed that already.  I fixed a couple of other things and I have a task list for next week to fix up.  Everyone enjoyed themselves and they all performed very well.  Pity for one of my trains in particular - the Brisbane Limited which must have driven Bob mad, and we had issues with a couple of locos as well - which Arthur copped.

The CPH was running ready to depart South Brisbane Interstate Station on an ARHS tour to Kyogle

The Pay bus doing what it does at Border Loop.

The ARHS Tour has made it to Kyogle.

The Brisbane Limited heading north through The Risk.

These four photos by Shelton D'Cruz.

More Layout Planning and Runnings a Couple of Trains

There was a working bee on the FreeMo modules of the Division on Monday.  We had a few attendees and work progressed well.  I think all the planned changes that I had listed on one module were implemented, and that modules look good.  We just need to connect up the track bus on the module, and then do the ballasting.  Did I say that the module looks good?  The second module was also tarted up quite well, although from my point of view, I feel it was let down with some very poor scenicing around a house.  The scenic material that was applied is too green and too thick.  But that is just me.  I will check this out again next time we work on it.  This module also needs the track bus wired up and then ballast added.  But before the ballasting, we first need to paint the rails.  I need to put the hard word on PK to do that as he is the resident expert in this technique.

I had solo access to the house on Wednesday as the boss went out.  So I unrolled a few of my track planning sheets on the floor of the kitchen/family room.  I then started laying pieces of track on the already laid out track lines on those sheets.  I then went and looked at how the new pieces of dual gauge track that I built last week were going to fit into the current plan.  So it turned out quite easily.  Although later on in the afternoon, I pulled up my aerial photos of the location I am modelling.  When rechecking my track plan it turned out that I had a couple of sidings feeding into the wrong tracks,  I just needed to move a set of points from the first siding track to the second siding track and then move the location of one of the new dual gauge points back about 450mm and all should be good.   

This is the northern end of the sidings, looking south.  The track at the bottom left is the standard gauge lead in.  The next two tracks to the right are the narrow gauge main lines, UP on the left and DOWN on the right.  Not shown here is the dual gauge mainline further to the right.

The next shot shows the end of the sidings.  I did not layout all the track in the sidings.  The right most track is the branch line.

On Thursday night I got an order for 3 of my Incinerators.  So I made up another 4 on Friday.  They tested OK.  I will deliver these next Tuesday evening.  Next job was to visit the local hobby shop for a browse.  Later in the arvo, I went to the Shed and ran two trains to progress thew timetable by about 45 minutes.  These two trains were not completed last Ops Session, as there were not enough crew to keep up with the clock.  The first train was the steel shunt from Acacia Ridge Yard to Clapham Yard followed by a propel back into Salisbury Siding.  Part of running this train is to do the various end of train activities associated with it.  This involves unloading the wire coils from the coil carrier wagon and placing them into the coil container.  I also had to unload the 5 steel coils from the cradles on the train.  Because this train did not start last session and thus did not complete, the coils of wire were not in the Steel container under the layout when the empty steel train travelled back from Acacia Ridge Yard to Grafton Yard.  So when this train gets to Grafton yard, the operator needs to re-stock this empty train and make a loaded steel train.  But with no wire coils in the steel container, this could not be done.  So I also did this task.  The second train was a light engine movement from Loco Pilly to Park Road Siding.  This is a positioning movement to have the locos on the train for the following shunt movement from Park Road Siding to Clapham Yard.  So this shunt movement is the first train to run following the resumption of the Ops Session next Sunday.  I was most impressed by the smooth running of both these trains around the layout.

I went to the Club on Saturday and caught up with the great unwashed and PK and Greg.  I had some good discussions with various people through the day.

Today I went down the shed after lunch and continued work installing the track bus on the Sunnybank Branch.  I’ve only got about 10 feet so far today.  I hope to continue this on Monday afternoon with the next 10 feet or so to be done.  I did a test and I do now have track power in Sunnybank as I ran my QR railmotor up and down the siding at this location. Who knows, if this bus install is complete by the weekend, I might have to inject a railmotor or passenger train into the timetable on next Sunday.  I also did a bit of work securing the coil steel cradles to the flat cars they are installed on.  These cradles float about on the wagons a bit.  So it is about time to make them permanent.  I used white glue for this purpose...

Building Track for the New Layout

I got online a couple of Tuesday nights back with some of the Tuesday Nighters and Tyler from Taswegia.  Tyler was showing me detail photos from the QLD QImagery site from the 90’s.  We got online again on the Wednesday evening and a very detailed photo that Tyler provided me, blew we away and caused me to revisit my future exhibition layout track design.  My previous design of my future layout was from published photos and articles on the topic.   I had wrongfully designed the narrow gauge trackage in my layout siding area to have a large narrow gauge loop.  I guess these diagrams were correct at a point in time and not when I was setting my layout date.  The QImagery shots are more timely and thus more accurate.  A closer look at the photo shows that there was another section of dual gauge trackage in the yard.  I was planning on making the sidings through a large building on the layout - narrow gauge.  They were in fact both standard gauge tracks with one of those being dual gauge.  Out the back of the building, there was a crossover and two dead end tracks not both tracks coming into a single track section as I had planned it.  So I now needed to borrow PK’s dual gauge jigs again and build at least 3 more dual gauge points.  While that will be fun, it complicates the trackwork immensely, but it will also look very interesting.  I went down to the shed on Thursday of the previous week lunch time and went through my collection of previously made dual gauge trackage.  At that time I thought it turned out that two of the three pieces of track have already been made.  I have gone through a number of iterations of trackage on Cassino in a number of areas (well actually around Acacia Ridge Yard, Clapham Yard and Fisherman Islands).  So, these old points get taken out and replaced from time to time as I make changes to the trackwork, etc.  So I joined two of these pieces of track up to some narrow, standard and dual gauge flex track and ran some wagons through the track.  I’m quite happy that the already existing pieces of track all seem to run quite well.  So I only now have to build one set of dual gate points.

But I need to get my paper track layout diagrams out and re-design things to ensure that everything still fits.  I could not be bothered last week to do that.  So it looks like this Wednesday is when I will do this.

On Tuesday evening this week, I picked up the FastTrack Jigs from PK at our fortnightly Tuesday Nighter's in person meeting.  This jig will allow me to build my first point in the sequence from the siding.  I easily built that on Wednesday morning. This point was not actually a point.  It could have been built just as a splitter piece of track with the narrow gauge going straight and standard gauge coming in from the right.  However, the shared rail is on the right.  I did not need a moving point blade, as I could have just guided the wheels on the standard gauge around that angle.  But I put the moving point rail in this version of the track.  That might change in the future.  In the afternoon, I went down to the shed to put this new piece of track next to the point that goes next to it.  Then I went DOH!  The piece that I had reserved for this location, was in fact only a splitter track, and not a left hand narrow gauge track with dual gauge and a common right hand rail.  Bugger.  I had two of these pieces of track.  So I could have half demolished this piece of track and add in the narrow gauge point component, but I’m thinking that it will be far easier just building the new piece of track.  Luckily, this piece of track that I now have to make, is the other piece of track in the current Jig that I borrowed off PK on Tuesday night.  Sometimes you can get lucky.

The first point I built on Wednesday this week was the one on the left above.  But when it came time to check it with the one I already had previously built, (the one on the right above) my original one was just a splitter, instead of a point.  So I needed to make the one on the right.

This was an existing point that will go on the layout and form a standard gauge crossover outside a shed (which will be on the left of the point) to enable a run around movement on the standard gauge locos.

So this new point was built on Wednesday afternoon and finished off on Thursday morning.  While not perfect, I can successfully run narrow gauge and standard gauge wagons through the trackage.  I have also joined everything up in a test arrangement and can run trains the combination of all their pieces of track now.  PK may get his jig back next Saturday.  But it depends on how many photos he published of me over the coming week.

On Saturday I participated in a planning day for our NMRA Division to help identify some of the things we need to accomplish over the next 12 months.