The year to date....

Following a bereavement in the family just after our train group's Christmas breakup, Peter R coming to visit, a variety of medical issues for me and my wife, a family wedding in New Zealand which meant us being away overseas for a month all led to my hobby activities taking a rear seat.

Despite all that some activities have occurred which included: extending the Hornertown west shunt main, relocating the western wall clock, mocking up a servo controlled turnout to show Barry, planning and running Session 2, calling into Model Rail Radio, implementing waybills, planning Session 3 (of the 8), a weekend excursion to Steamtown at Peterborough, enjoying four train trips in New Zealand and attending an operating session at Wayne's.

Track work

Following feedback from my operators I had to extend the Hornertown West Shunt main.  I had been told that to improve the efficiency of shunt movements they need to be able to have an additional car in the shunt string.  I removed some of the scenery and extended the track ready for Session 2.

Clock Relocation

Previously I mounted the clock on the Western Wall at the top of the backdrop.  The mounting was not stable and overtime it dislodged several times.  Peter R and I permanently relocated it to the upper level fascia when he visited for a few days.

Servo Controlled Turnouts

Barry is now planning his layout "in earnest" and it was time to demonstrate to him the use of servos controlled by an Ardrino. So I developed a simple arrangement to show him all the elements we could use for control, power routing and indications.

5V relay on left and small breadboard with frog power indicator LED's.

Small breadboard with Arduino Nano, change state switch and turnout position indicator LED's

Putting it all together

Subsequently he gave me his first yard design to work with....

It will be fun to do in the future.

Session 2

Following the successful completion of Session 1 I prepared the paperwork for Session 2 which included 43 movements.  Barry, Don, John, Peter J, Peter S, Wayne and I had a good afternoon.  With only a small number of adjustments required to the paperwork I have decided to move straight on to Session 3.

Here is a link to the Train Graph in Pdf form - remember to zoom in...

Thanks to Peter J for grabbing a few photos of our activities.

Barry, Wayne, Me and Don

John

Don and Barry

Wayne having crib between movements

Me at the main control panel

Peter S and Don

Model Rail Radio Show #152

I made a brief appearance during the show and it was nice to catch up with Tom and the crew.

Implementing Waybills

I have been hanging off introducing the waybills until the operating sessions stabilised so I did not have too many things changing at once.

I bit the bullet so Wayne and I spent a few hours placing them into the car card pockets. so the In Hold Out boxes are now in operation at each yard!

No doubt I will get some feedback from the boys that will require some tweaking but hey it is underway!

Ops Planning - Session 3

I had to get this completed before my next operating session on 19 May.  I am pleased to report that the paperwork is done and hopefully will run ok on the day.  Spacky and Jock will join another six of us at the session.

There are 47 scheduled movements see below

Here is a link to the Train Graph in Pdf form - remember to zoom in...

Spacky is cooking a BBQ here afterwards in appreciation!

Steamtown Trip

The weekend of 6/7 April saw Barry, Don, Chris, Leonie, Spacy, Jock and me meet at Peterborough mid afternoon. After a few drinks we had dinner at the Peterborough Hotel before going to the sound and light show at Steamtown.

At dinner

L-R Don, Me, Jock, Spacky, Barry, Chris and Leonie

Sunday morning we returned to do the tour which lasted about two hours.

Triple Gauge Turntable

After the tour we all went to The Tin Shed at Peterborough for Morning tea (well lunch for some) before we headed home.

NZ Trains

Kaye and I travelled to New Zealand for our Son's wedding so stayed a bit longer to have a look around and ride Dunedin Railways Taieri George Train and all three of KiwiRail’s Great Journeys of New Zealand The TranzAlpine Greymouth to Christchurch, The Coastal Pacific Christchurch to Picton and The Northern Explorer Wellington to Auckland.

There are links to the videos I have put together.  It was unfortunate that KiWi Rail had to close the open observation coaches due to unsafe behaviour of previous passengers so all videos and pictures had to be taken through carriage windows.

Dunedin Railways Taieri George Train

Full Video

Highlights Only

The TranzAlpine Greymouth to Christchurch

The Coastal Pacific Christchurch to Picton

The Northern Explorer Wellington to Auckland

Op Session at Wayne's

The first session was held on 28 March.  We were running session 2 of Wayne's new series of 5 sessions.  Things worked pretty well and we had an enjoyable afternoon.

Till next time.....

-ooOOOoo-

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-