The only thing this week was I purchased the decoders from the Club store that I required for the Sentinel shunter and Class 08 shunter. I had intended to install these over the weekend, but this didn't eventuate. So a task to do this week hopefully.
I didn't make it to the Brisbane Model Railway Show this year. Family commitments took precedence.
The ANZAC long weekend started on Friday with me going along to the local dawn service. I was quite surprised at the number of people who turned out. Maybe the weather had something to do with it as it wasn't cold at all considering the time of year. Afterwards I went home and quietly potted around, loaded the car with the rollingstock and Pi that I was taking to the club that morning, and just generally waited for the rest of the family to wake up. Once I had fed the boys and tidied up I waited for the missus to get up. Once up I said my good byes and escaped to the club. I was meeting up with another member who wanted to see the Pi working on a layout. PK was also there when I arrived. So after I connected everything up to the DCC system I realised I had forgotten to bring along the USB interface module, so back home I went. Lucky I am only 7 minutes away. Back at the club and everything working, PK was able to connect with his iPhone which was great as I haven't had a iPhone connect. I connected and we ran some trains from our phones. Amazing! The Prez rocked up shortly afterwards and also seemed impressed by the little Pi. Anyway by midday it was time to go home as we had plans for the afternoon, bicycling down at Sandgate.
The rest of the weekend was modelling free unfortunately as other things got in the way. The hobby room is no closer to being used as the missus decided to paint the inside of the cupboards as well, so the room is full of everything that was in the cupboard (big cupboard!). I did however take out the Sentinel and Class 08 to check on the decoder types and size needed. PK was at the club today and picked up some different types to bring to work for me to see and decided which ones to purchase.
The Brisbane Model Railway Show is on this upcoming weekend, but I am not sure if I will be going along. Saturday is now footy day for Lachlan, and he was also wanting to go to the Lions vs Swans game at the Gabba as well that night. We'll see! Sunday I was supposed to be working (very rare thing for me to work on the weekend) but I have been able to move a few things around in the project to do before and after the weekend, however the family was invited yesterday to my niece's birthday, so it looks like any chance of going along is now very slim!
Now the BIG Decision explanation. Back in February I applied to a job ad Queensland Rail had advertised, for Trainee Network Controller positions (the guys and gals on the boards!). I was successful in getting through the first two rounds of psychometric testing, when in fact I thought I had stuffed up the second one. I was then invited along to the Group Assessment just before Easter, which involved seven applicants working as a team in managing a situation. I think I was the second oldest there. Most were young guys and one girl. All very eager. I thought I had duded this as I wasn't the most enthusiastic in the group. But I did get through and was invited to undertake more psychometric testing this week. Between the last two invitations I did some research on the pay and conditions based on some info that the HR person mentioned at the Group test. I was prepared to to make up the shortfall in pay for a short time. However based on an incorrect assumption on the progression through the base pay levels, it would have taken longer than I had planned for, and thus would have been financially unsustainable. Along with very unsociable working hours, working in a windowless room, and the fact that my sons are really needing me to be about home for them, and not being fair on the missus and the family income I decided on Sunday night to decline further testing and pull my application.However it was very nice to have had the opportunity to progress so far through the testing. If only I was twenty years younger!
I will just have to be a controller on model railways ;-)
Well not much happened modelling wise over the weekend. Other things got in the way! Also still no closer to getting my hobby table back into the hobby/rumpus room as the missus was busy entertaining kids last week during the school holidays and didn't get any time to finish the painting in that room.
The afternoon of Good Friday though I took Matthew down to the Club so that (a) he was out of Mum's hair, (b) he could run some of his DC trains, and (c) I could test the Pi on the new layout by taking all my bits and bobs down and hopefully not be disturbed by other members. The Club was empty so full steam ahead! After what seemed ages getting Matthew's DC trains running on the old permanent layout which seems to have missed a bit of cleaning of late (members are running on the DCC new layout at the moment!), I was able to connect up the Pi. Within a couple of minutes the Pi was broadcasting it's wifi IP address and once connected to my smartphone, Engine Driver app was able to see JMRI being broadcasted as well. Connection made. I was then able to run a NSWGR 44 with some wagons effortlessly around the layout. Sure was good not to be tethered via the NCE throttle. Even Matthew was able to walk around and follow the train, blasting away on the horn!
I'm now researching what size motion decoders to put in the Bachmann Class 08 and Dapol Sentinel shunters that I bought last year. I don't think I will do sound on these as not much space in them.
Unfortunately the missus decided that the hobby (now rumpus as well) room needed to be further freshened up after the recent painting so she has been busy painting trims and doors which I thank her for, but the hobby table has had to stay in the shed to give her room to do her painting. She is hoping to have this finished by the Easter weekend, so maybe I can move back in then.
My old PC which has all the PIC programming applications on runs on XP so I am currently reluctant to connect it to the internet to do any app upgrades etc before moving onto Mr Mackie's project. I could still do this in isolation but if I need to go out into the big wide world it might be an issue now that XP is no longer supported by Microsoft. Decisions, decisions..
The Club layout is now operational on DCC with a number of NCE UTP panels about the layout so that it can be shared. I took the VR Walker railmotor down for a spin and it was a bit stuttery (is there such a word? Is now!). At first I though it might have been dirty tracks and dirty wheels. The track was cleaned and I cleaned the main traction wheels, as the end bogies are purely for pickup purposes. But it was still stuttery. So maybe a good clean all round and check the gears for any rubbish or greasing issues was suggested by another member. Hopefully I didn't pickup any loose ballast as it was later discovered the stuff was magnetic.
Apart from that, just idling along.
A quick update as no modelling has been happening due to the house renos starting last week and proceeding through this week. As a result the study/hobbby room is chockers full of furniture being stored out of the way!
On the day of the last posting, the Ebay purchase of the Hornby transformer arrived in the mail. Still pretty good working quality but the variable speed is a bit skittish, so might have to look into that. Might just need a potentiometer replacement?
Mr Mackie was elated that the IR transceivers had finally arrived from China and is now questioning when his crossing detector will be made. All in good time!
Last week two of the three Hattons orders from the UK arrived with the Metcalfe kits and a few little other scenery items, but one bow still yet to arrive. Maybe this week.
No rush as I have no where to build them anyway.
On that note, I have decided to sort out that 73 Class once and for all when the hobby room is back to being used.
After a quick chat to Mr Mackie through the week, I investigated the switch that I had used on Lachlan's layout for the lighting. It looked OK and no apparent loose wire/s making a short circuit. So I did the time honoured act of tapping it on something hard in case there was something amiss inside, rewired it and bingo the light went on and the power controller behaved like it should. I must say the Gaugemaster controller is a little beauty for power output on the track. I cut down some timber strips to act as a holder as the controller didn't have any onboard screw holes unfortunately. Lachlan is quite excited about his layout at the moment. I might have to do more things like putting in a simple manual signal that he (or Matthew) can just turn on or off when they want to.
With respect to the motive power depot backscene, I did some further investigation and measurements throught the week and discovered I had sufficient room for some low relief buildings along the backboard as well as some full relief buildings to service the sidings, from the Metcalfe Model range of cardboard kits. So an order was placed with Hattons of Liverpool as the were the cheapest (including the postage from the UK). These should fill in the space nicely and allow me to keep the momentum up on modelling this side of the layout.
Not forgetting the Kensington Hill side of the layout, I glued up a Ratio line side hut kit that came with a Railway Modeller magazine and spray painted it over the weekend with car undercoat spray. I will then hand paint the features some time soon.
I have also dug out the Dapol pub that I want on this side as well for glueing up.
No closer to the 73 class' wiring up and I will have to pack this away again as I have tradies coming in next week to start two weeks of renos in the house. So it might be best to wait until all work in the hobby room/study/kids TV room is finished before getting stuck into finishing this off.
This week I am hoping to receive the Hornby controller I picked up on Ebay, maybe those IR transceivers might come in, and maybe the Hattons orders will get here as well. Time will tell.
Since the last post I have been a bit all over the place with things.
Re the Pi, I was able to autostart the IP addressing broadcasting which was a great relief. I have done a few tests on the Edimax mini dongle's wifi range when connected directly to the Pi and via a powered USB hub. Quick summary is that for any decent range, the wifi dongle of any type does need to be powered via a powered hub. Connecting directly to the Pi's onboard USB ports does not give it sufficient range apart from maybe a couple of meters at the most.
Lachlan and I installed the donated lights a weekend ago without burning ourselves with the soldering iron. I was able to accomplish this by jacking up the layout using Triton Multi-Stands to a height whereby we could sit under the layout. This worked great up to the point where I seem to have thrown my back out! Anyway we connected the grain of wheat bulb based lights in parallel using a 'accessory bus' of speaker wire. This seemed to do the trick momentarily but it looks like I had made a short and the little Hornby controller fritzed out! Stuff all voltage was coming out of either the 12VDC controlled terminals or the 16VAC accessory terminals. Damn! I connected up the lights to an old H&M controller I have and the same thing happened but the H&M has a auto fuse I think which cut out before any damage occurred. I found the short, fixed it, and reconnected the H&M 12VDC regulated directly to the lights to see if 12VDC worked ok. It did. Maybe it is the type of bulbs? Anyway I mentioned to Mr Mackie and PK the need for another controller and Mr Mackie kindly offered some of his old ones. At the Club Meeting on Saturday, we tested a couple, and found one that seemed to fit the bill. After the Club, I went home and connected it up. The 12VDC regulated control was a bit finicky and not very responsive but the more interesting thing was when I connected up the lights to the 16VAC terminals and turned the line slide switch on the test loco only moved when both the accessory switch was on. When I turned it off, the loco stopped. Very strange as the power sources should be separate inside the controller. The lights also went on momentarily then turned off for no apparent reason. Most troubling. As a back up I had been keeping an eye on an old Hornby PSR (P?) type controller on Ebay. This was similar to the controller I had when I was a boy. It had both 12VDC and 15VAC accessory terminals. Time would tell if I decided to put a bid in. So today I decided to buy a new controller. I went to Hobbyrama and bought a Gaugemaster 12VDC controller with 16VAC accessory terminals. I came home, wired it in, and once again the accessories played up, but the track control was ever so smooth. Could it be the lights need 12VDC?? Not sure. Anyway I was lucky to win the auction and hopefully this may answer the problems. If so great. If not, I have another spare controller!
The IR transceivers have yet to arrive from China. Must be on that slow boat! So no PIC programming started yet.
I was able to put together a Dapol war memorial kit through the week. OK it only had three parts but it is a start! I've moved back most of my equipment to the study from the shed where it has been since the carpet was laid and I had to clean out the study of furniture. I have a couple of weeks before the painters come so maybe I will concentrate on that 73 Class?
I was able to do some work on my layout with trying different concepts on the motive depot side's backscene. I looked for some photo-realistic images on Google and only came up with a Mill. All the town high street scenes were modern image, not 1950's or 60s. Many of the photo-realistic backscenes you can buy just didn't fit properly. So I will have to make a compromise and use model realistic type scenes similar to the Scalescenes buildings I am using. I stumbled on a site http://www.wordsworthmodelrailway.co.uk/ which has free scene and kit downloads which might fit the bill. I printed off some backscenes and brick wall arches and have temporarily blu-tacked them up to visually check them out. As expected the image is not photo-realistic but I guess the end result I want is in the depot itself and not the backscene, which is just there to fill in the blue sky! So I might progress with this just so that it is out of the way.
The other thing that happened at the Club was a father and son had started up their own home based laser cutting business. They had some initial models made up ready for gluing to show the other members and as Lachlan and I were leaving Tristan (the son) offered Lachlan one of the laser cut wood buildings for free for his layout. Lachlan was over the moon and now I have to glue it up and we will then place it on Lachlan's layout. It is very Australian in prototype and probably not something you would find in Alaska, but you could do it up like a boat house and place it near a river or lake, which Lachlan does have.
That's all for now. My time will probably be devoted to either the 73 Class &/or trying to work out the problem with the lighting on Lachlan's layout.
