Getting older I have found I can't do what I used to do physically. Luckily, I have some people that help me. Don and Rosslyn undertook some maintenance activities, Peter J worked on scenery and structures and during my ops sessions Barry runs the control panels which is allowing me to continue to do what I enjoy.

This month has seen things happening on trackwork, scenery, structures, Sounds for EVNGR, Ops Sessions, Tasks completed & scheduled.

Flintston Cold Stores

Peter J constructed a cardboard mock up for a trial fit and we decided it was a bit too long, so it was a well worthwhile exercise.

Flintston Warehouse

I have left the mock up in place during operating sessions and the reaction from operators has been positive.

Huntington Branch

Peter J has started the scenery up the grade on the Huntington Branch line behind Flintston and between Hornertown and Daveyston.

Sounds for EVNGR

Peter J informed me he demonstrated the Trial module to this month's NMRA meeting unfortunately I did not get to attend. He changed the speaker to one of a similar rating in a speaker box - a required improvement.

Following the Trails that I outlined last month, I have been working on changing Trial 2 based on what I achieved in Trial 3. I am simplifying the design doing away with the solid state relay.

I ordered the DC-DC Buck Converter's, Arduino nano's, nano mounting boards, 5W sound boards from Ali Express and they are now on hand to work with.

Nano Mounting Board Kit

Underside has 60 Solder points per board

Top view after assembly

4 boards with Nano's fitted ready to be used.

A side issue was Usb connections:

old Nano's have USB 1.0/2.0 Mini Type-A connection,
5W Sound modules USB 2.0 Micro-B
New Nano's USB 3.0 Type-C

so a mix of cables is required for configuration and programming.

Maintenance

Don and Rosslyn came over to carry out some track maintenance at Stanvac Junction and Iron Hill in the morning before we all meet my international visitors.

Stanvac Junction

The snowplow on a loco used on the Jimtown turn was "catching" on the spring steel wire used to move the throw bar of two turnouts. Don ground down the wires to ensure clearance. Rosslyn noticed the front of the loco looked a bit odd - this was the loco that had the "trapped" pickup wire that had been addressed previously. Turned out that the body was not fully clipped down on the chassis and once realised and fixed it gave additional clearance as well!

Iron Hill

Operators had reported that the clearance past the loaded ore train locos when stabled was too tight. Don & Rosslyn extended the track for me.

They fitted Hayes-built bumpers to both tracks.

Then Peter J started to reinstate the scenery.

International Visitors

On 9th April Jeffrey and Piotr from Poland came to visit as part of their four-week holiday in Australia. Jeffrey and I have been friends on Facebook for some time following a post on "Fans of A Modeler's Life" on 27 September 2024. We finally met face to face!

L>R Don, Poitr, Jeffrey & Rosslyn

We enjoyed drinking some Zinfandel from Sonoma County, the closest thing I have found to Zinfandel that we had in 2016 when Rosslyn and I enjoyed time in the restaurant observation car on the Nappa Valley Wine Train.

I cooked a sausages and onions which we enjoyed in bread with sauce.

After lunch we rain some trains before having a full BBQ tea before dropping them off at the local metro station,

Jeffrey unloading ore cars at Huntington Steelworks

Layout Planning

I have been spending some time helping Alex work through ideas of what he could do when building his new Marklin layout. I have been using AnyRail and the Marklin library to develop what might fit. Below are a few ideas being considered.

Things are at a very early stage so let's see how things will pan out over time.

Ops Sessions

I hosted two sessions, Session #79 & Session #80 and I attended Wayne's since my last update.

HCS 30th March - Session #79

Barry, Denis, Don, Graham, Rosslyn, Paul & Wayne joined me for the session. I was not feeling 100% so Barry led the session and I helped here and there especially where operators had not done a job before.

We had a few issues causing maintenance and the coal train steam locos has some unexplained derailments.

Not feeling the best, I did not take photos of operators in action.

Afterwards we enjoyed afternoon tea.

HCS 15th April - Session #80

Alex, Barry, Denis, Graham, Peter J & Wayne join me for the session.

We all had some fun even though there were a few issues along the way. The full operating program was achieved leaving me nothing to tidy up between sessions!

L>R Peter J, Wayne, Denis, Alex, Graham & Barry

I forgot to take any action photos...

Afterwards most of us, apart from those having to depart for dinner and show in the city, enjoyed afternoon tea.

Wayne's 23rd April

Barry, Denis, Peter S & I joined Wayne for the session.

We completed the whole session even finishing a bit early then enjoyed afternoon tea and the usual social chat.

L>R Wayne, Denis, Peter S & Barry

Here is a short video of some movements during the session

Tasks Completed in last 30 days

Scheduled Tasks for next 90 days

That's it for now so until next time.....

-ooOOOoo-

This month has seen a few things happening: Flintston Industries, Sounds for EVNGR, Ops Sessions, Tasks completed & scheduled.

Flintston Cold Stores

I have placed some books to simulate the proposed cold store building size to see if my operators can still carry out all shunting functions without causing a problem.

For session #77 I used what is shown below.

The feedback was no impact and would be ok.

For session #78 I increased the height see below.

The feedback was it was too high!

So, I will measure the first configuration, and we will work with that for the building height.

Flintston Warehouse

Peter J brought me a "mock up" of the warehouse building. We propose to use some Clever Models images for brickwork, windows and concrete.

When the printed products were sourced all were good apart from the Dark Concrete & Medium Concrete which seemed too dark so Light Concrete was sourced and provides what we think is a better colour to use.

Sounds for EVNGR

Back in 2017 I put some sound files together using Audacity but for one reason or another we did not proceed, well now Peter J wants to implement sounds in three areas of his layout.

Peter would like two configurations:

On/Off by switch and volume control
On/Off by switch and/or movement sensing and volume control.

Peter had watched "Adding Sound to a Model Railroad Layout" on "Ron's Trains N Things" on YouTube and thought it could be a way to add the sounds he wanted. I watched the video and followed up on the components that Ron had used, and it was great but quite an expensive option so I decided to look at alternate ways to achieve the same outcome at a lower price.

Trial 1

I purchased a couple of different sound modules to experiment with the first was "8M Sound Modul Programmierbare MP3 WAV Musik Player with Speaker" from Amazon. It is an 0.5W unit so may not have the desired power output, time will tell.

Peter has a 12V DC Power Bus around the layout, so I put a diode bridge on the terminal block before the input side of a "LM2596S DC-DC Step Down Variable Volt Regulator" which I set to 4.7V using my bench power supply at 12V then the sound module with screw terminal blocks for the speaker wires.

I had to adjust the volume level in the mp3 file by +20db which allowed further adjustment on the config file of the sound module. Peter will build a speaker box. The disadvantage of this module is the sound level is fixed so a laptop to change setting in the config file is required to make changes.

Trial 2

Peter had watched a video on Ron's Trains N Things watch here. After watching you will see the methodology he used which formed the basis of my trial.

When I researched details in the video it was an expensive solution, so I decided to find a cheaper solution.

This trial will be using a "DollaTek Voice Sound Playback Module Arduino MP3 Player Module UART I/O Trigger Class D Amplifier Board 5W 8M Storage SD/TF Card".

This card is far more flexible than the first one and by using a Arduino you can have control for volume, start stop etc.

I asked CoPilot to create a sketch to control it using an Arduino Nano which it did and I set about building a module that also incorporated the ultrasonic sensor to start/stop the player when it detected "presence of an object in range". I assembled it on a base.

R>L Power in, Bridge Rectifier, Buck Converter, Power out

R>L Power out, Nano, Volume control, Ultrasonic Sensor, Solid State Relay

R>L Solid State Rela, Stop/Stop switch, Sound Board, Speaker

My approach was let's start with a sketch to get the sound module working then move on to incorporate the ultrasonic sensor switching.

Well, the CoPilot sketch for using the UART control did not work. I decided to bread board another trial so changes did not involve soldering/desoldering.

Trial 3

I searched for methods how to use the sound board which led me to GitHub and I found a library that detailed the method and commands I could use. The fundamental difference was the pins used for Rx/Tx on the Nano. I changed the code and he presto it worked!

I will go back and change the connections on the Nano from trial 2 then move on to the ultrasonic switch.

My Ops Sessions

I hosted two sessions, Session #77 & Session #78 since my last update.

2nd March - Session #77

Barry, Denis, Don, Paul, Peter S, Rosslyn & Wayne joined me for the session. It was great to see Rosslyn back her last attendance was Session #53 on 2nd September 2024.

We had a good session with minimal glitches.

L>R Peter S, Denis, Wayne, Barry, Don, Paul & Rosslyn

Barry ran the session at the Control Panel

Peter S ran the Flintston Local

Don & Rosslyn ran the Jimtown Turn

Denis ran the Loaded Ore Train and some mainline trains

Wayne ran some mainline trains and the Empty Ore Train

Paul worked Hornertown Yard

A rare sight - Hornertown Yard being bare...

Afterwards most of us, apart from those having to depart for parent duties, enjoyed afternoon tea.

18th March - Session #78

I forgot the Rouges Gallery... Anyway John, Paul, Peter J & Wayne joined me while I ran the Control Panel until Barry arrived somewhat late.

L>R Alex & John

Peter J

Paul

Wayne

John having Crib

Afterwards most of us, apart from those having to depart for dinner and show in the city, enjoyed afternoon tea.

L>R Paul, Peter J, John, Wayne & Barry

26th - Wayne's

Darren, Don, Peter S and I joined Wayne. We had a good run as we tried out Session 4 of Wayne's new operating system. There were a couple of scheduling issues that Wayne will address and a few improvements to job cards which is to be expected with a brand-new operating regime.