Signal KH-3 operational

This weekend I focused my spare time in getting one of the installed signals operational. I decided to do the simpler of the two KH-3. So using the same setup as my test LEDs I soldered extension leads from the signal wires to the MRC 4-way accessory decoder Acc # 16. I then turned on the system and activated Acc 16 to ON which should have turned the Green aspect on. No go. Huh? Select 16 and turn OFF which should turn on the Red aspect. No go. Double huh! A bit of head scratching then happened. It was then time to go inside, so that was it for Saturday.

Further thinking during the evening came up with possible problems like "had I inadvertently reprogrammed the MRC decoder?", "had I buggered up the LEDs?", "is there an issue with the supplied LEDs in the Eckon kit (1000ohm) versus the supplied resistors with the MRC decoder (300ohm)?", "was it a soldering problem?", etc. Too much thinking over a few glasses of red in the evening meant no answers were forthcoming!

Sunday morning arrived and with some spare time after breakfast and before waking the neighbours up with the whipper snipper and mower, I went the shed to see if I could answer some of the above. I progressed through the list and ruled out most. What was going on? I reread the Eckon wiring instructions and the MRC manual. Nothing was obvious. I put my test LEDs on to the decoder outputs and they tested OK. Hummmm. Time to think a bit more while taming the lawn.

I had intended to go to the RMCQ (my club) Buy and Sell but a small family emergency entailed after the yard work and just before lunch. Son number One had misplaced a Lego Man he was going to use in a class project. This character was in a powerpoint presentation and thus couldn't easily be replaced. We searched all over the house for nearly an hour. Everywhere was given at least two searches by myself and the missus on separate occasions in case one of us missed it. We were on the verge of conceding defeat when Son number Two all of a sudden whilst in Son number One's bedroom found the lego man. What! So an indepth chat with a 2.5 year old entailed as to where did he find it. He finally pointed out a lego liferaft model with one of its sides down and it was apparently in there. We thanked young Matt with curious looks. Lachlan was adamant he hadn't placed it in there. I strongly suspect Matt had put it in there earlier this morning. So by the time we had done this, had lunch, and tried putting Matt down for a nap (and succeeding in putting myself to snoozeland as well!), I had missed the opportunity in getting down to the club. By all accounts it went quite well.

However the nap must have reinvigorated the brain cells as I quickly commandeered the laptop the missus was pottering around on to check something on LEDs on Wikipedia. Mainly the electronic symbol and usual orientation of the positive and negative terminals. Making a note of this, and following a coffee, I went to the shed again to check the documentation. EUREKA! I thought something was wrong. The MRC's common is positive whereas as per the Eckon wiring instructions I had the common as negative and resisted. The polarity on the Eckon LEDs was reversed and thus potentially not working. So I rewired to how MRC likes them presented, turned on the system, selected Acc 16 ON and bingo, Green came on.

Oh wow, what a lesson to note. Lord knows why the Eckon LEDs are wired like this. But now that I know, I can wire the remaining signals the same way.

Here is a small video of KH-3.

Not sure what this week will bring. I know I have to paint Lachlan's shop pavement before we can place it on his layout. Maybe the other signal which has a junction feather. Let's see.

SB3a finally arrives, but no USB ;-(

The week was sans modelling. Busy with other stuff. I called Austral on Friday arvo for the weekly check on the SB3a's arrival and was pleasantly surprised when Ray said it had arrived but the USB card was still on back order. Hoorah!
So when planning Saturday's activities I was able to splice in a trip to the southside to pick up the SB3a. I will have to sort the USB out when it arrives.
Sunday was also very busy but I was able to get to the shed just after 4pm to connect up the SB3a. No problems, strange that the Cab number initially shown on power up was '09' when it only allows 02 to 05?? I changed it to '05' as '03' is reserved for the mini-panel, and I have reserved the USB to use '02'. This leaves '04' spare.
Lachlan wanted to do some more work on his layout so we decided where the shop was going and I showed him how to scrape the grass flock away ready for positioning. I will have to paint the pavement gray sometime this week.
Matthew was running Toby on Lachlan's layout while we were busy with the above.

Unfortunately I missed the Ipswich model train show at The Workshops this weekend.

Hopefully some opportunities this week at night to do some work.

The running day photos as promised

Craig (at the back) sporting his headset as North Coast Control (the Bearded Controller!), Darryl and PK (at the front)

The Bearded Controller though the decks



View through Kyogle heading towards Fairy Hill (CPH railmotor in the siding)



Darryl sporting his 'radio' headset

When you gotta go, you gotta go!

Maintenance crew hard at it

I don't know why PK is sniffing his iPhone though? Must be one of those 'iSmell' apps ;-)
(Pardon the time stamp on the video, it should be 23/10/11 but obviously the date file is wrong!)

Trip to the southside for a running day on Cassino

The day I have been waiting for all week while I have been on leave finally arrived. Today. After a busy morning attending to a vet's appointment for the dog, I got in the car and drove the 50 minutes or so south to Mr Mackie's humble abode for the much anticipated running day (afternoon!) on his layout, Cassino (link in blog's on the right).

A good crew turned up and plenty of laughs eventuated due to the timetable going out the window and a best effort run occurring. The headsets for communicating with Control operated fairly well apart from a few hiccups easily fixed. After a few hours I had to leave the others to head back home and spend some time with the boys. I get home and the missus says "I wasn't expecting to see you until 5:30". Damn! I could have spent another 45 minutes at Craig's!

I have some photos of the afternoon that I have to convert to a lower resolution and hopefully a video off the spycam, but I will have to check these tomorrow and upload if OK.

Lachlan wanted me to do something on his layout, so off to the shed we went. I glued a lady figurine down onto the church footpath, coming out of the gate. I also cut down some styrene to glue the village shop onto so that it had some pavement out front. Then it was time to play with the boys in the yard for half an hour or so.

So thanks Craig for an entertaining afternoon, sans children!

Kensington Hills receives its first signals

Tuesday evening I was able to find some spare time in the shed. What to do, what to do? Signals!

So I started installing the Eckon signals I made back in July and August. First one in was KH4, the feathered two aspect signal at the ramp end of Kensington Hill station just before the tunnel mouth. The second one for the night was KH3 which is the two aspect signal guarding the point out of the engine stable siding. I initially installed it to close to the point curve and when I did a test run through with a couple of wagons, it bumped into them. So I had to position it further down the siding straight (about 5 cm). All good now. I didn't have a chance to wire up the extension cables to the MRC 4-way accessory decoder/s so this will be a job for another time. Two signals yet to be installed (KH1 and KH2).

I also took the opportunity in gluing down the red phone box and the street light near it.

The weekly phone call to Austral on Saturday morning came up empty. They are hoping for some stock to arrive through the week but couldn't say what would be in the delivery.

Saturday afternoon about 4pm a clanger of a hail storm came racing through. Golf ball sized stones were crashing into everything like gunfire! I can't remember when I last saw hail that size. The boys thought it was great. Mum and myself were worried about windows being broken though. It lasted about 5-10 minutes and no damage to either the house or the Shed (as far as I could tell). Nothing happened today as I was busy with yard chores.

Nothing going to happen through the week this week but maybe something special on Sunday. Stay tuned!

Some new photos and what happened this week

This week was fairly void of modelling on Illavearf. Saturday morning I was told to look after the boys as I wasn't going to be around in the arvo. So off to Hobbyrama we went. It was a quick visit but Matthew enjoyed it. He could name all the Thomas engines in the display case. As he has a fixation for Toby (for whatever reason) I decided to buy the one in the display case as his engine to run on the layouts. After the Club Monthly Meeting on Saturday, I raced home as the youngest was missing Dad and was inconsolable by his Mum. I spent some time with both boys, firstly running Toby around for Matthew on Lachlan's layout with a borrowed Annie in tow. Then I was also able to put the fence up around the church on Beaver Springs. Go on over to that blog to see some photos.

Sunday was busy with some Spring Cleaning about the house, namely carpet shampooing which is always a fun thing in my books! So no free time to do anything on Illavearf. I was able though last night to take some photos of the recent work (red phone booth, street light, and path fencing), so here they be. Excuse the mess I haven't had a chance to clean up.

Illavearf finally gets some attention

Saturday arvo was spent watching the AFL GF (go The Cats!) so no shed-time that afternoon. Late Sunday morning though found me in the shed contemplating which layout to work on, Beaver Springs or Illavearf. The latter was chosen. I spent the time wiring in the second MRC decoder to the bus and Point 5 to the second DS64, whilst 'supervising' the boys in the yard. I was surprised at my soldering skills on this occasion as it all went like clockwork! Fortunately the boys behaved themselves and spent more time in the shed looking at what I was doing than running around like blue-arsed flies in the yard. With Point 5 wired in, the Kensington Hill side is now completed. I tested the mimic board and some weird things were happening. Time for lunch!

After a post lunch nap, I ventured again into the shed on my lonesome to do some troubleshooting. The mimic board issue was a result of two issues. I hadn't programmed the mini-panel for Point 5's inputs (thought I had done this when I had done Point 4!) and the feedback LED power leads were reversed. Both easily fixed. While I had the controller connected into the mini-panel, I did some reprogramming of Point 4's commands as well, as both Point 4 and Point 5 need to be interlocked else derailments would occur. As for the feedback signal, a simple wire reversal was needed at the point mini-switch block.

As no children had yet come out to divert my attention elsewhere, I took the opportunity to fix the footpath fencing for the station in place. I then tried various locations for the red telephone booth and settled on one close to the road, station car park and the end of the footpath fencing. I scrapped away the grass and positioned it in place. I then found one of my street lights, drilled a 3mm hole close to the telephone booth and positioned it in place. Yet to glue both in though as I will give it a day or so and see if it still looks OK.

So finally some movement on Illavearf's modelling!