December Update

Merry Christmas to all my followers.

This month activities included blue box kits, ops paperwork, lighting the loco workshop, my operating session and attending another before we had our Christmas breakup.

Ops Session Monday 3rd

Well after 12 months of trailing Session 1 I am pleased to report that the changes at Hornertown coupled with the new paperwork actually worked very well to the point where I can say "I have a system that works" and we can move on the planning session 2 of proposed total of 8 required to incorporate all staged trains.

During the session Don and Peter S ran Hornertown and Barry, Rosslyn, Peter J and Wayne ran all the other train movements and I worked the main panel.  A total of 55 movements were undertaken. There was a couple of operational incidents - a run away set of freight cars down the helix when a "hi-lo coupler set" let go - bad orders issued!  and some troublesome carriages on a new passenger train that derailed - some investigation is required.

I did learn that the crossing loop section as shown on my bottom level concept plan was erroneous on one connection to Lewiston loop - it only showed up after scheduling a train over a new route!  Changes have been made!

Old

Revised

Blue Box Builds

Now the operations plan is coming together there are times when I run low on Cabooses so I built a couple of Athearn Blue Box kits I bought nearly 30 years ago with a few extras.  Windows added, Kadee couplers, additional weight and Proto 2000 trucks used instead of the originals.

Wow I paid $AUS 6.20 for it!

All that is left is to make the car cards.

Loco Workshop

For quite some time the boys have been saying I needed to remove a roof section and fit lighting to the loco workshop.  I finally got the knife out and sliced one end open so I could pry the roof from the glue on the structure walls. I fitted some left over LED strip to the underside of the roof along with a RF dimmer so I could adjust the light level.

No Lights

With Lights

I wanted to add some animation by way of two welding bays.  When I did my fitting and turning apprenticeship back in the late 60's all the welding bays had six foot high screens around then so workers were spared from the dreaded "welding flash" eye burns.  I made some screens from 0.040" styrene and pained then a dark canvas colour to resemble my memories...

Using Dr Geoff Bunza's code I modified it significantly to introduce a second welder and make the total cycle more random.  I mounted the arduino nano on a project board and added a LM7805 to reduce the 12V supply for the LED's to 5V for the nano.

Here is a video I shot however it is not my best work but you get the idea...

Ops Planning - Session 2

The planning has commenced and I expect that apart from running mainline trains, Hornertown Yard Local Passenger and Flintston will have similar movements to session 1.  The Huntington Local, Loaded Ore (Iron Hill to Huntington), Empty Ore (Stirling East to Iron Hill),  Oily (Stirling Vale-Jimtown-Stanvac-Hornertown-Stirling  Vale), Express Goods West and Passenger (Hornertown-Stirling North).

I need to schedule all the movements (timetable and train graphs) ensuring appropriate distribution of operators around the layout, car movement switch lists (as I have not introduced my waybills yet) and the job cards. 

Op Session at Wayne's

Well the last Ops session for the year was held on Wednesday 12th. I joined Alan, Des, Don, John, Murray, Ross & Wayne.  We had a good running session with few issues.

L-R Des, John, Alan & Ross

L-R Wayne, Don & Murray

L-R Des & Alan

Thanks Wayne for hosting all the running sessions this year.  I have enjoyed attending and running a number of different trains and I think I got to every designated location on the layout this year!

Christmas Breakup

Our Christmas breakup dinner was held at the Crown Inn Old Reynella.  We invite past, present group members & operators and 20 of us enjoyed an evening together.

Our first round robin get together will be on 4th February 2019.

So in summary I have had a year of fun and some frustration but all in all positive.  It was great to finally get agreement that session 1 be initially set in stone so we can move forward albeit it took a lot longer than I first imagined.  I look forward to next year, the preliminary schedule for next year gives me time to design and produce paperwork for additional ops sessions.

Thanks for all the encouragement and support offered throughout the year!

I hope you enjoy the festive season.

Till the end of January.....

-ooOOOoo-