This month activities included maintenance, Hornertown changes, ops paperwork changes, decoder install, Granddaughters' first loco drive, 0402 pre-wired LEDs and I attended two operating sessions.
Maintenance
During the last Ops session on a few occasions Don was sure "something was off the rails" due to some wheel noise. His caring hands went to fix the problem but there was NO problem. Turns out there were a few places where the ballast was a bit high causing the noise but no derailments.
Don & I had a session to eliminate the problem so the yard was cleared and careful assessment of every track was undertaken and offending ballast removed.
I noticed the closure rails of the turnout off the main into Flintston was not closing properly so Wayne and Des gave me a hand to do the adjustments. Me under the layout doing the work and Wayne above checking operation and Des operating the main control panel. All is now good!
Don & I had a session to eliminate the problem so the yard was cleared and careful assessment of every track was undertaken and offending ballast removed.
I noticed the closure rails of the turnout off the main into Flintston was not closing properly so Wayne and Des gave me a hand to do the adjustments. Me under the layout doing the work and Wayne above checking operation and Des operating the main control panel. All is now good!
Changes at Hornertown
The op sessions held this year have highlighted that with proper use of the classification tracks there is insufficient storage - I estimate the yard was getting up to 85% of its capacity.
My initial thought was to reduce the coach storage from 3 tracks to 2 and use the third track for storage. After some thought I realised looking back at all the sessions I have run over the last 3 years that we had never changed a passenger consist during a session. The operations strategy includes staging at Stirling (6 tracks), Fleets Loop (3 tracks) and Upper Level (3 Tracks) and Local Goods to Jimtown, Flintston & Huntington. The consist interchanges occur with Express Goods entering or leaving Stirling and Fleets Loop coupled with consists for Local Goods.
3 tracks and three locations so I have allocated one track each Stirling, Fleets and Locals. Hornertown has two operators assigned for each ops session, Yardmaster and Assistant (shunter). Train #815 Hornertown Classification will service these tracks and will be in two parts the Yardmaster sorts the classification tracks and the shunter transfers cars from classification to storage and vice versa.
Ops Paperwork Changes
Following additional operator feedback I have updated the paperwork which should be easier to understand and use.
On the Hornertown Summary Sheet the only shunt moves are clearing and loading the arrival departure tracks and all other movements are treated a stand alone shunt movements with their own switch lists/instructions.
Original
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The most complicated switch list Train #815
Original
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Decoder Change
This was one of my very first DCC Locos I purchased it is a Life Like Proto 2000 GP9e. It came with a QSI decoder and it kept loosing its settings to the point it was removed from the layout. Earlier this year I purchased a run out sale Tsumani AT-1000 Diesel 567 non turbo decoder. This month I finally got around to fitting it.
I removed the factory QSI board and cut a piece of 0.020" styrene to match the size of the QSI board and placed that between the new decoder and the metal weight. The decoder was mounted using poster tape on the styrene. Kapton tape was applied to ensure no shorting.
The lighting package is not prototypical for the loco number but it is for other numbers so I may renumber it later. I fitted golden LED's which are held in place using some Krystal Clear.
After reassembly it was placed on the rollers for speed matching. The maximum speed was set using the trim settings first. Results of the first and subsequent attempts are shown below.
That's close enough to enable good consisting performance. The acceleration and deceleration was then set by running on the layout against existing locos tweaking with Ops mode programming using JMRI. My roster files are stored on Dropbox and shared between my workshop room and the layout room so all changes are available in both locations - I only use one of the JMRI installations at a time to avoid any conflicts.
Granddaughters' first Loco Drive
Well after many sessions of watching by my granddaughters "I bit the bullet" and decided to let them drive a loco on the layout. I choose to run the shunt engines from Hornertown Yard as they are speed limited to 25 mph.
The video shows part of the fun we had.
0402 Pre-wired LEDs
I have enough trouble soldering 0603 LEDs but sometimes they are a bit big so I had been looking for some 0402 pre-wired 3V 20ma LEDs. I purchased 100 from FunTrying Art & Craft for $36.72 so I was happy to get them for $0.37 ($US0.25) each.
Ops Sessions at Wayne's
Two ops sessions were scheduled at Wayne's this month however mother nature intervened with a storm that left Wayne without power and unable to host the second session.
Wednesday 14th
Alan, Don, Murray, John, Ross & I took part and we had a nice slower pace session as we had 6 operators for the four person base session so we all had a bit less work to do.
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| L to R: Ross, Wayne, Don & Murray |
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| L to R: John, Wayne, Alan & Ross |
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| Don & Murray |
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| L to R: John at Lowood Crossing & Ross at Stokers Siding |
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| Alan at Dunkleigh Towers |
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| Don at Forrest Gully |
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| Wayne at Loco Depot & Alan at Industries in Dunkleigh Towers |
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| Murray behind Valley Junction Loco Depot |
Thursday 22nd
Was cancelled due to no power so an impromptu Trainmasters TV session was held at my place in lieu.
Ops Session at Adelachian Lines
We had a familiarisation session at Don's this month and Barry, Chris, Des, Rosslyn, Wayne & I attended. This was the second time I have run a train "through the system".
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| Chris & Rosslyn at Swanport |
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| Wayne at Moorvale Plains |
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| Des at Horton |
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| Don running the main control panel |
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| L to R: Barry, Des, Chris, Rosslyn & Don |
So quite a busy month all in all. Next Month I will host an operating session, I hope to have a arduino project working and I hope to get some LED lighting working in the loco workshop.
Till the end of December.....
-ooOOOoo-
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