Greg's Railway Modelling Musings: Mini-panel success and other things

This week has been one of a number of small success stories. After waiting over a week for a reply directly from NCE I posted the same question to the NCE-DCC yahoo forum and over night received three replies. Thanks to Mark Gurries, Rex Beistle and Graeme Brown for their answers which explained and cleared up some uncertainty around the use of the TERMINATOR, NOP and LINK commands. Following hot on their heals (strangely enough) was a reply from NCE. Thanks to Matt for providing additional information. Subsequent to these answers, I revisited my mini-panel programming during the week. Still had problems. Hmmmm. Come Sunday I thought lets go back to programming basics. I would clear out all commands currently in the mini-panel by going through each input and programming a TERMINATE into each memory slot per input. Didn't take too long once you got the hang of it! Using my Operating rules I developed through the week, I started with what I wanted to do at system startup and entered the appropriate commands. Tested these and worked OK. Next the "GOD INPUT" - the one that "makes the mainline active". Tested OK. Then moved on from Input 1 programming each input, testing, and then moving onto the next LINKed input's programming, testing, etc. Then I programmed the alternate Inputs. Once all this was done, it was time for the BIG TEST. A real POWER OFF and ON (power cycle). Did this and it kind of worked. Some of the initial commands didn't work. Maybe at power on Input 31 issued the commands but the other decoders hadn't completed their start up cycle. Let's inject a DELAY command at the start of Input 31 to allow the other DCC systems to get ready to accept commands. Not knowing how long this could be I started with 20 seconds. Another power cycle. After waiting what seemed to be an eternity but really only 20 seconds everything came up as it should. HOORAH!! Time to work on that DELAY command and see what the minimum wait could be, so I reprogrammed it a number of times (16 -> 12 -> 8 ->4). As it all worked OK for 4 seconds I left it at that. I couldn't be bothered checking further in 1/4 sec increments!

So I have included pictures of my Operating Rules and Mini-panel configurations below for reference.

I have also got a link to a movie of the signals in action. This has been speeded up x4 to get through the sequencing it as short a time as possible.

What else happened? Well my order from Kernow Models in the UK arrived on Friday, so on Saturday night I was able to progress a little further with my signal cabin as I had a figure I could use as the signalman. A bit more painting inside so that the light will not escape through the plastic once installed. Now I just have to rig up the LED and somehow install the roof so that it is removable but semi-fixed in place.

Saturday morning I was able to catch up with the father of two (twins) friends of Son # 1 at their house at their birthday party. He has a freelance layout which is currently a work in progress (aren't they all!) but he showed me some of his locos, one of which was a US steamer with smoke. A couple of smartphone videos below (sorry for quality).

The Club Xmas do and modelling competition on Saturday was also well attended but not many actual models went in for the competition. I was unable to put anything in this year as I ran out of time, and have been concentrating on Illavearf's electrics this year. Hopefully next year as we are intending to do different categories. Photos of the winners below (sorry for the smartphone camera quality, it was the only thing I had at the time!).