Thursday, February 27, 2025

February Update

This month a few things have been achieved and included: new project, Speed Stick, Speed Matching, Loco Maintenance, My Ops Session, Tasks completed & scheduled.

New Project

I was given a Swedish loco and a couple of wagons when I hosted Bo during his visit about a year ago. I am finally getting around to working out a small shelf with a run of about 2 metres which I will position somewhere in my house.

Show #70 March2, 2013 on Model Rail Radio "The Professor Silencer" made by Duncan McRee was discussed.

I followed up with Duncan a couple of months ago and he now markets it as the "Train Shuttle" and can be found here

How it works can be seen here

I will develop this further over time.

Speed Stick

My Bachrus Speedometer has been playing up since I moved to the runtime version of Java so I wanted more reliablility and Peter from Victoria brought my appention to the Speed Stick.

I orderd one, it was a bit dearer than I expected and the postage costs were excessive,however, it has arrived and I have started using it.

Speed Matching

My first try using the speed stick. I put all my Bachrus Base data into a Excel Spreadsheet for reference.

I speed match on steps 7, 14, 21 & 28

Here is a video showing checking a speed step

Loco Maintenance

I had a consist fail during the session, so the offending locos were removed and replaced. Subsequently they went to the workshop and the decoders were factory reset and programming info re-written using JMRI. It would appear the QSI V7 decoder failed and caused the issues. After a factory reset the QSI has sound in forward but no drive and no sound in reverse and no drive. Looks like another one for the bin! I have ordered an new Tsumani2 to replace it, hopefully it will arrive soon.

My Ops Session on 19th

Finally after some months I held an op session. Alex, Barry, Denis, John, Peter J and Ross came and it was great to see you all after such a long break.

Given it had been some months we all were a bit rusty but we got through around 90% of all the scheduled movements and Barry despite being "under pressure" a few times did very well.

I have finished all outstanding tasks from the session and updated waybills etc ready for the next session whenever that will be.

I will attend to the remaning maintenance issues in due course.