Tinkerings this week

I was able to get a spare 30 minutes on Tuesday night to prove if a styrene cone could be made for the grass machine. I cut out a paper template and then transferred it to 0.5mm thick styrene. I thought thinner might crimp to easily and any thicker might not have folded. The 0.5mm (.020") worked a treat. I held the two edges together with some strip and some magic tape while the glue set. I tested it on Wednesday night. The Woodland Scenics static grass worked OK but clumped. On Sunday I used the Noch grass and it worked a lot better through the smaller aperture.

Saturday was Club day. I showed off the grass machine to a few of the guys and all were impressed. I finally returned the Noch GrasMaster to PK. Thanks for the extended loan! I also received by latest order from MB Klein via PK, which consisted of mostly electronics to start on the layout.

Some time was spent on Lachlan's layout Saturday arvo after the Club as I also received some stuff for his layout. We put some station crew and passengers on the station and placed grit around the platforms. Sunday afternoon I replaced the dodgy point on Lachlan's layout with a Peco medium radius. This changed the alignment of the siding slightly.

I was able to get around to the control panel for the Kensington Hill signal box. Another How-To will follow about how I designed this, but today's effort basically involved cutting down some perspex sheeting and contact gluing the transparency onto the perspex. Once this sets I can start the drilling of the switch placement holes and the LED indicator holes. Once these are in place I can then progress to wiring up the panel to the NCE mini-panel, the Digitrax DS64, the MRC accessory decoder, signals, lighting and off course the point-motors. Busy times ahead!


Photo of the control panel



A cone is born!

I am still waiting for MRH to advise whether they have accepted my article for publication but they are more than likely busy with preparing March's edition. As such I still can't advise to much more on my grass machine. However I have been working on making a cone attachment to reduce the aperture size of the screen end. I was able to do this throught the week with a cardboard trial version. I was intending to make one out of thin styrene this weekend but couldn't get time alone to do it. So maybe this week.

I had a reply from Model Rectifier Corporation wrt their 4 output accessory decoder and I am suitably informed. Can't wait to get one to investigate (play?) further.

The only other thing done over the weekend was on Lachlan's layout. Some more grassing using my machine. We also glued down some of his buildings. Yet to take photos and update his blog.

MRH Mag dialogue

This week I spent most of my free time compiling the how-to article about the grass machine. I approached Model Railway Hobbyist Magazine (www.mrhmag.com) and they were interested in it. I am waiting on the outcome of the submission so until I know whether it has been accepted or not, I will refrain from publishing my article on this blog .

I also spent the remainder of my free time researching various DCC products around accessory control. I have made the decision to have Illavearf under 100% DCC control. Currently I could switch it between DC and DCC so that I could run older or non-DCCed locos, but the time has come to start the electrics around point, lighting and signal control. I was originally thinking of running a separate DC based "control" circuit so that whether I was running DC or DCC, the controls would still work. Further consideration and some long navel gazing brought me around to the decision to make DCC the preferred control medium. As most new layouts seem to be heading down the DCC only path I may as well jump onto the bandwagon. As I also have Lachlan's DC layout I can use this to run any older DC locos until converted to DCC if they are able to.

So my friend Mr Mackie has used the NCE mini-panel and Digitrax DS64 accessory decoder very successfully, so I will go down this path as well. However this doesn't solve the problem of how to control non-point accessories such as signals, lighting, etc. Not much is out there but I stumbled on the MRC 4 output accessory decoder which allows signals and lighting via a latching circuit, point motor control if required, and crossing flashing lights (or anything requiring a flashing circuit). The manual on this device is OK but I wanted more info, so I have placed a posting on the MRC Yahoo Forum page and I am awaiting an answer. In the meantime I have placed an order for one of these, a NCE mini-panel, a Digitrax DS64, and various types of switches to be installed on the mimic boards.

All a good learning curve that I will attempt to describe and provide my experiences with from within this blog.

Activity to date

I must firstly apologise for not having updated the blog of late. Busy doing other things and then had a problem accessing the blog!

Over the last couple of weeks my focus has been on the development, manufacture and testing of my own static grass application device. I had some issues with the electronic circuitry for the 'ON' indicator LED, but with the help of my mates PK and Mr Mackie I was able to sort it out and it tested all ok on the weekend (hooray!). I have decided to withhold a photo at this point in time as I am in the process of writing an article for publication and a photo might preempt someone else in doing something similar. My version is nothing like the German hand grenade design of similar Noch facsimilies! I will however put the How-To article up on this blog in the not to distant future.

I have also been spending some time on Lachlan's Beaver Springs layout so pop on over to it to see what has been happening on that layout.

As for Illavearf, it has been waiting for awhile for my return. That occurred over the weekend when I was able to do some more around the station. The car park, foot paths and additional grassed areas (using my new applicator!) were done. I can now put the footpath fencing in place then move onto something else.

Articles that I have written updated

I have updated this page with some more content. Feel free to click on over.

EL51 back on the roster

Well the plan outlined in the previous blog about getting EL51 decoded by Wednesday's club day didn't come off as planned basically because I didn't get my @rse into gear! I didn't get to the club either on Wednesday as there was illness in the family, so we had a fairly quiet Aussie Day at home. However I did sit down on Friday evening and got stuck in wiring up the Digitrax DZ125 decoder. I had done some research earlier in the week about wiring multiple LEDs to be controlled by the one function wire. Apparently in SERIES is the go. So off the F0f (FWD) function I wired up the headlight, front white markers, front ditch lights and rear red markers. The reason for this is that I blew out the forward red markers and rear white markers a number of months ago.Off F0r function (REV) I wired up the rear headlight. Prototypically the EL Class run cab forward so the rear headlight would not be used that much. Saturday afternoon I tested the wiring on the layout to see if it all worked according to plan. Not quite! Apparently what I thought was the front white marker lights weren't. They were the front red marker lights. Oh well back to the wiring. Saturday evening after getting over the beers I had at my Dad's 70th party over Saturday lunch, I removed the red front markers lights from the FWD series and spliced it into the REV series. So now red marker lights illuminate in both directions but unfortunately there are no front white marker lights. Possibly in the future I will buy a decoder with more functions and put in some LEDs for the missing marker lights, but at this point in time I am over EL51's decoder sagas and just want the thing to be moving around a layout!

The only other thing I did was that on Saturday arvo upon our return from the tavern I was having a bit of a planning session on Illavearf and discovered that since laying the road the farm gate would actually be opening into the path of traffic! So I turned it around so that the gate would swing correctly. It is always the little things that could stuff up a layout's look.

Well this week I don't really know what I will be doing now that the locos are all sorted out. I might have a look at the ground level signal box kit but time will tell.

A few little things done this week

This week was a tad busy and as such I didn't get around to furthering the scenery around Kensington Hill Station. I was however able one evening to have a closer look at what work I needed to do to my CFCLA EL Class (EL51) loco to get it up and running after the Select sound chip debacle and the preceding dismantlement of the out of the box circuit board. It is a bit of a mess. The space under the shell is bugger all so I will have to look at something slim line as I am 99.99% sure that I have Buckley's to get the circuit board operational again. I have also zapped a couple of the flush mount LEDs. I have a spare Digitrax DS125 decoder that I could use. This motor decoder is very small as it is designed for Z scale but can be used in HO where space is a premium. It however only comes with two functions other than the motor functions. So specifically aimed at lights. I am thinking of connecting the forward headlight, front white marker lights, rear red marker lights and forward ditch lights in serial so that one function basically turns on on the front lights other than the front red marker lights which is OK as the front red marker LED is one of the ones I have zapped. The other function would be for the Rear headlight only. This is probably OK as it would be hardly used as prototypically this class of loco only ever ran cab forward. If I get my @rse into gear over the next couple of nights I might have it ready by Wednesday. As Wednesday is Australia Day and a public holiday I might be able to get to the club for a run. If not for EL51 I could give 4494 a run with some rollingstock. Lachlan might tag along as well.

On the subject of 4494 mentioned in my last blog, I am thinking of writing an article so stay tune on that thought. I have approached Continental Modeller and they said they might be interested but would need to see the article and photos. Fair enough! If not good enough for CM, then I would approach AMRM.

As for Lachlan's layout we did spend about 3/4 of an hour on it Saturday arvo, planning roads, the lake he is so very fixed on having, doing some more static grassing, and preparing another section with scatter before the static grass is applied. I am using Lachlan's layout as an experimental canvas in trying different techniques I have read about and seeing the outcome before applying it to Illavearf.

Well it is only three months until the club's new HO layout plans are to be submitted for consideration by the committee. I am thinking of putting something in but as I am not very experienced in designing very large layouts, I might be barking up the wrong tree but hey it is something else to fill in the evenings with!

And BTW Selleys Mould Remover works a treat on mildew. I was surprised how much of the stuff there was. Something for those with MDF storage trays or boxes, look under the foam tray inlays as the mildew was hiding there as well. As for the box, look under the box and the inside. Hopefully some fine weather will prevent the mildew from returning to soon.