February Update

This month has seen activities that included:  Establishing my new Website, My Modeling Desk, Gutting the MTH DCS PA's, Rossco's Interlocking, Ops Session at the EVNGR and an Ops Session at Wayne's.

My new Website

I have started to build my new website where I hope to make it easy to find things of interest from a diverse range of topics.

Take a look - your feedback would be welcome...

Modeling Desk Tidied

It had come to that point where it was getting harder to find things and the available space for under taking tasks was too small.  Well it took about 7 hours to pack things up clean up and be ready for the next project.

MTH PA's/PB

Out with the DCS Proto Sound 3 and in with LokSound V4.0....

I had two PA's and a PB to convert basically the same install in all three except the PB did not have the lighting.  Upon disassembly I discovered the LED lights - all six - were wired for -ve ground so every LED had to be removed and replaced with the polarity reversed.  It was painful as on assembly the tails of the LEDs had been bent before soldering and some had one leg soldered on each side of the PCB.

The pictures tell the story...

PA's

PB

Rossco's Interlocking

I have finished the Panels and coding so they were bench tested before heading over to install

Bench Testing

Black Route - No Panel has "Control"

Black Route - Panel "A" has "Control"

Red Route - Panel "A" has "Control"

Red Route - Panel "A" has "Control" - Panel B has "NO Control"

Red Route - Panel "A" has "Control" - Panel B has "NO Control"

Red Route - Panel "A" has "Control" - Panel B has "NO Control"

Red Route retained when - Panel "A" drops "Control"

Red Route - Panel "B" has "Control"

Black Route - Panel "B" has "Control"

Black Route retained when - Panel "B" drops "Control"

The Tracks

Turn out power and frog power connections

Installing Panel A

Tidying up the wiring loom

Panel B was installed below the control panel for Moorvale.

The remaining work is to insert the isolation sections and their respective feeders then terminate to the isolation relay outputs.  I discovered that Rossco had installed live frog crossovers and I was expecting insulated ones - just what I'm used to!   So two Tam Valley Depot DCC Dual Frog Juicer's have been ordered to deal with the issue.  Having seem Duncan's workshop in San Diego it is nice we are going to be using some of his gear.

Ops Session @ EVNGR

Last year Andrew Emmett brought Gerry Hopkins and Peter Jackson to see my layout and I was invited to go see Peter Jackson's Eureka Valley Narrow Gauge Railroad.  I followed this up and some of our Monday Night Group and Wayne went up for an Op Session.

The theme for the EVNGR has its origins to the Nevada County Narrow Gauge – a 3’gauge railroad that serviced some of the gold mining areas of northern California. Peter's inspiration came from reading Gerald Best’s book about the NCNG and the era is set in the 1930’s to early 1940’s

Barry, Peter, Chris, Derek & Wayne (L to R)

We had a lovely evening operating the layout - so much so the crew suggested we should visit Peter at least once per year!

Peter is a Master Model Railroader and here is a link to his layout tour on the Australian Region NMRA Website.

Thanks Peter!

Ops Session at Wayne's

We had fun at Wayne's testing out the "NEW" Lowood Crossing.  It was good to see Don and Des could make it too. We had a good session until Murphy struck us when one of the Capacitor Discharge Units failed!  The failure meant the turnouts in  three stations were not operable.  We has refreshments a bit earlier than planned.

Chris & Des

Don & Barry

Des & Wayne

Wayne & Don

I think the "NEW" Lowood Crossing works so much better than the previous one - well done Wayne!

We look forward to our next visit in March.

Till the end of March.....

-ooOOOoo-

January Update

This month has seen some activity after our holiday and included:  Ops Session at Chris's, Rossco's Interlocking, another Grandson visit, work at Wayne's and the outcome of the JMRI Technical Issues.

Chris's Ops Session

The first Ops session for the year was at Chris's and was attended by Don, Derek, Rossco, Pierre, myself & Chris.  Chris issued us hand written instructions on lined paper and we worked in pairs and ran two trains each during the 1 1/2 hour session.  This year will be a series of shakedowns to "tune" the work undertaken so far.  We will work to eliminate any technical and operational issues that will no doubnt arise - we have our first list!

Thanks Chris for a good night and pleasant supper with Adult beverages.

Rossco's Interlocking

I have been badgering Rossco to complete the track work on his upper level on the western wall for about three years. Well the trip last year reinvigorated his mojo and he again has "the bug" to get the layout working - YES!

He had a design issue and could not get away with out a junction requiring interlocking to avoid unwanted meet ups!  I said that's not a problem "I'll trick it up"....

Well it had a bit more work than I first expected as the interlocking needed to be operated from two operator positions one in an aisle and one in a "crawl in and pop up space" in the central island.

After some design work we settled on a panel layout which had to include the ability to set three turnouts along with the interlocking features.

I decided to use one of the spare TI Launchpads I had and a 5V 1Amp wall wart to power the controller and the indications on the panels.  I will use bi-colour LED's to indicate the Route selected. Apart from interlocking the tracks I needed to make sure that only "one" Panel could have control at a time.

Route "E" is the RED line

There are 19 Control and Indication connections and seven connections for turnout operation.  Panel A needs feeders 8.2 metres long and Panel B 4.5 metres long and the controller is near the power outlet!

Some panel construction photos follow...

And finally they look lie....

Now for the control board.

The control status LED's are driven by Optocouplers (at the top) which switch their supply voltage based on the micro-controller "pin state".  The relays switch the two sets of 7 LED's that show the current route and one the DCC track feed.

I think I have designed a solution that will meet the needs.  The proof will be in the testing to be done in February.

I will probably write it up for Terry Terrance's Launchpad for Model Railroading site later when I am happy with the outcome.

Grandson Visit

During the Christmas school holidays I had another visit for some more operating of the layout. So I set up for a local to arrive at Flinston and let the shunting begin.  I worked the control panel under direction and we had a good 2 1/2 hour session!

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Wayne's

I had a request to build a board with connections and resistors for the new Lowood Crossing Control Panel terminations.  There are 50 LED's in the Panel.

Then Wayne decided that due to all the terminating that will be required for this panel a slide out shelf would make the task so much easier to we installed one under the relay shelf.

Plenty of terminating awaits....

JMRI Issues

Last month I reported loading JMRI Test version 4.5.7 I had an error appearing on both my installation and Chris's installation.  I had to ask the guru's on the yahoo group.

I am pleased to advice that Paul B from the support group has fixed the problem and after downloading from the "daily build' page and installing a pre-release version all is working fine.  Thanks Paul B.

Till the end of February.....

-ooOOOoo-