Traction at last on Illavearf

I was fortunate on Sunday to finally get some traction (pardon the pun) on Illavearf after many months in limbo. I tackled Kensington Hill's scenery by scattering my ant dirt (see article written ages ago) over the brown painted hill. Left for a bit to dry and repeated it. Green scatter was next, followed by some lighter green with various 'flowers' colours for contrast as I am trying to model a Spring scene. Some dark green lichen followed around one of the edges of the backboard to break the rather harsh ground-sky horizon and to suggest bracken hedges around the farm that is to go up on the hill. I will continue this idea around the other two sides of the hill during the week. Also two lichen 'rock climbing bushes' placed either side of the tunnel to break up the rock scene. Still a way to go but finally looking as though something is happening. Some photos of the Hill.

I still have to place the railside fencing, farm track, road, farm house (if I decide to put one in), trees and sheep in.

On Lachlan's layout, I was able to spend about an hour or so on Saturday getting the supports in for the plastering of the mountain-tunnel. I was intending to do the plastering on Sunday but I was selfish and decided to undertake the above work on Illavearf.

No word from Marcus over the weekend so I think I will go ahead and get the LEDs from DCC Concepts anyway.

So near and yet so far away for completion

Sorry for the tardiness of this week's post, I was intending to do something earlier but the week got away from me! Well last week's success with the Select was a bit premature. Basically after wiring up the lights and going for a test run, I blew them up with too much voltage. I hadn't wired resistors between the decoder and the 1.5V incandescent bulbs. After reading the small print in the installation guide, I soon realised that 1.5V bulbs don't like 16V punching through them! A query out to the Yahoo Loksound forum was answered by Marcus Ammann, followed up by photos of his installation. These are a great reference source. By all accounts it looks as though I will now have to do a bit of customising of the lights on the 44 by replacing them with LEDs. At this point I am also wondering whether I also install the red/white marker light LEDs as well. Hopefully Marcus will reply to my email over the weekend on this matter. I can then place an order with DCC Concepts for the required LEDs. Looks like a few more weeks at the minimum before I have the 44 Class operational.

I chased up MRRC yesterday and they hadn't heard anything from ESU. Gary was going to make another phone call. So the EL Class is still in limbo. Probably the only thing I can with this project is to look at the wiring again with the purpose of reducing the amount of extraneous wire lengths present so that the shell will fit back on. Maybe this will be next week's activity while waiting for the 44 Class bits and pieces to arrive.

Unsure what this weekend will bring modelling wise. Hopefully a couple of hours somewhere, doing something!

Hoo-bloody-ray! Success with a Select

My main focus this week was to get the 44 Class Select decoder installed to at least the motor control stage to ensure wiring correctness. This was achieved late Friday night and successfully tested at the club on Saturday arvo. It was apparent very early that the Trainorama supplied speakers were tinny at the default decoder volume, so I had to adjust the overall volume to remove most of the tinniness. Unsure whether this is a characteristic for all of these manufacturer supplied speakers or only if a quality decoder such as the Select is installed. If I get feedback advising that the speakers should be exchanged, then I may have to look into swapping them out for Loksound speakers. I didn't connect up the lights at this point. So it looks like I will have to fiddle around with the sound CVs to get something that is fairly reasonable. My task this week will be to connect up the lights. I have been taking notes and photos as I go so that I can write up a How-To. Stay tuned for this to be published soon.

No further word yet from MRRC on the EL class decoder that I sent away.

On Lachlan's layout we did some more scenicing but didn't get too far into it. Illavearf once again missed out on my attention to it this weekend as I HAD to get some yard and house jobs done on Sunday.

I read my mate Mr Mackie's blog last night and he seems to have lost his mojo (motivation). Hopefully the comment I left perks him up?

Well finally a few positive things to write about this week.

The week that was!

Last week was not overly busy modelling wise, but very busy with life in general. On Tuesday, Gary from MRRC called to discuss the Select decoder that I had sent back to him. His conclusion is that it is either an improperly setup or corrupt configuration file on the decoder. The popping sound was in his opinion the GE sniffer valve but it shouldn't have been active except when the sound was turned on. He had to converse with ESU to investigate this further.

Saturday and Sunday was the club's (RMCQ) show days. I worked for a few hours Saturday arvo. I had seen most of the layout's before, except maybe one or two. I bought a Silvermaz RU Wheat Wagon kit to try my hand at kit modelling.

Late Saturday arvo when I got home from the show, Lachlan wanted to do some work on his layout. So off to the shed we went. It may not have been the correct order of things, but he wanted to put some grass down. As it is his layout, I spread some PVA about and gave him the turf scatter to spread around. I went back over it with the usual 50/50 PVA/water mix to really glue it down.

I didn't get anywhere near the 44 Class sound decoder install. Fingers crossed for the upcoming week that I may have it done before club day on Saturday.

Antipodean correction

A BIG THANKYOU must go out to my learned mate Mr Mackie for pointing out to me last week where the word "class" is to be used for Oz related locos. As I also have an earlier background in UK modelling I have always put the word "class" prior to the number. Apparently this is arse-about in the Antipodeas (like everything else!). That is, Class 'xx' for UK, and 'xx' Class for Oz. I must remember this when I am writing these blogs.

I mailed off the dodgy Select decoder to MRRC last week after going through further troubleshooting. So hopefully I will get good news from them sometime this week.

As for installing the other Select in the 44 Class (how's that Craig?), I didn't get too far with it last week apart from trying to work out where to put the thing. It looks like I have to strip out the existing circuit board and hard wire in the decoder just so that I can fit the decoder in. Current placement looks like on top of the motor. To provide heat insulation between the motor and decoder, my other learned colleague and mate PK suggested using Kapton tape. Fortunately he had a small supply of the stuff that I obtained from him on Saturday morning after a flying visit past the clubhouse. So now that I have all the components, I am hoping I will get sometime this week to install the decoder. I will NOT be doing the additional marker lights customisation as per Marcus Ammann's site (http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/mainnorth/44mark.htm) for the moment. After the trials and tribulations of the EL Class (see Craig I am learning!) I think the little I do on this the better for the moment. I can always look at this later if my sanity is up to it!

The only layout modelling done this week was a bit Saturday arvo and Sunday arvo on Lachlan's layout. Work on the mountain continues, but it is coming closer to plastering time. Lachlan is looking forward to this bit as he can literally get his hands dirty with plaster.

Decoder troubleshooting and Gold Coast Show visit

This week I was just about to mail off by supposed dodgy Select decoder when I had a chat with my mate Mr Mackie. He suggested a few other troubleshooting tests. I didn't get any spare time at night during the week to do the tests (Masterchef and the Tour de France were getting in the way of my spare time!) but Saturday afternoon I started the first of the suggested tests. I went to my own layout and using my own NCE Powercab I started up the decoder. The popping noise was still present. So this ruled out a possible handset problem as I was using the Club's handset last week when I did the original install. I switched the layout over to DC to see if it is a DCC or DCC/DC based problem. The Select is an auto detect decoder so no problems there. However the popping noise was still present. Looking more and more like a decoder problem. The last test was to connect up my other Class 44 based Select to the speaker and EL pickups and see if the sound was still there. I did the required unsoldering of the current decoder speaker wires and soldering of the other decoder speaker wires on Saturday night. I didn't get around to testing this until late Sunday afternoon after our return from the Gold Coast Train Show. No popping sound. So it looks pretty much a 100% decoder problem. So now I can put all these troubleshooting tests down on paper and mail back to MRRC for replacement or fixing (I hope!).

On the subject of the Gold Coast Train Show, I took the family on a day trip down to the coast on Sunday. We had lunch by the Broadwater before heading back to Ashmore PCYC for the show. The club (RMCQ) had taken down the HO and N exhibition layouts. This was the first show for the Gold Coast Miniature Train Club (I hope that is correct?) and it appeared to be fairly well patronised. Quite a few layouts and retailers present. Only probably one or two layouts that I hadn't seen before but good to see our club's layouts in their splendour, as well as a good turnout of operating crew from the club. One of these days when my boys are older I will hopefully be able to contribute my time on these outings a bit more. A few of the lads apparently were a bit sluggish come Saturday morning as the previous night's chug-a-lug of red beat the previous record set at the Toowoomba show. Boys will be boys whatever their age!

Well this week will probably see me sorting out the dodgy decoder for mailing. I might also get in some scenery time on Illavearf and Lachlan's layout, but time (and catching up on Tour de France recordings from the last three weeks!) will tell.

Banging my head in frustration!!

I went to the club on Wednesday morning as I had some free time before an afternoon of appointments, so I took the oportunity of taking my EL class down to do some serious wiring away from the distractions (ie children) at home. Well after I had wired the track pickups and motor to the decoder it was time for a test. No sooner had I turned the test track on than a popping noise emanated from the speaker. This was even before I had turned the sound on the decoder ON! WTF! Could it be what looks like a stay-alive capacitor, as the popping noise was very regular in its rhythm. Like a capacitor charging then discharging. The PowerCab was saying that 0.3 amps was being drawn. So off with one of the cap leads to the decoder, but still no joy. the sound persisted. Arghhhhhhh, will this project never end?
That night I put a query out to the Yahoo Loksound forum. By the morning I had a couple of replies which suggested a dud decoder. I emailed the store I had purchased it from, and they had no problems with me returning it for testing/replacement (hopefully!).
As I had purchased another Select for my NSWGR Class 44, but had yet to install it, I thought it wise to check this one out before mailing anything back to the store. Sunday morning I took the Class 44 out and removed the shell. Not much room 'under the hood' on this model either. BANG, BANG, BANG goes my head! Oh well, I can still connect the decoder up and test the sound, but may have to do some creative installing later. Update on how this decoder went next entry.