Track Progress

Well, very slowly.  I missed most of this week with family issues.  The worst one was Thursday.

We got up early, drove 350+miles to west Texas to visit Cindy's mom in a nursing home.  She kept begging us to send her husband, Jack, to get her and take her home.  He died in the summer of 2017.  Alzheimer's is a nasty condition.

After about an hour and a half, we left and drove back home.  Recovery Friday was a total washout.  Today (Saturday, I think?) I was able to work on the modules.

Note the end module on the left.  It can't be wired as a "normal" TTrak module in this scenario.  The Inside track must be the same polarity as the outside, as it's not "Inside" but rather a passing siding for the "Outer."  However, in other setups, it may be a "normal" end module.  So, I had to revise the wiring and add a terminal block and wiring to the track. In that way, it could enable the inner track polarity to be reversed, depending on the setup.  Not switchable, but swapping connections on the block at setup time.  If I just hadn't put the next module in there.  I never intended to do so, but it just got in there anyway . . . and it does look good there. Oh, well.

Then, there was a spot that kept bouncing the locos pretty bad.  I had missed getting the coupler on the rail properly.  Fixed that, and the power feed there, too.  I've had an SD-40 (Conrail Blue) and a B-23-7 (UP yellow) running reliable laps for over an hour (one at a time - DC for now, DCC later on the outer loop.)  I still need to to the "sweetening" on a pair of Kato #4's to hopefully end the occasional picking-the-points problem.

The inter-connected inner loops seem to have a short somewhere.  Since they span four modules, with the special Shorty loops inside them all interconnected, I'm sure it'll be easy to trouble shoot. NOT!  I'll spent the rest of the weekend thinking them over, and see what happens next week.

Oh, well, it's a lot closer to being good than ever before, track wise.

S/W Joe

WA5UNK

Half gone - where?

Oh, man, September is slipping by with not much modeling to show for it.  When I do get time to sit at the workbench, I'm generally feeling too tired to do much of anything.

I did finish three buildings.  They are the AMB_Laser Kit LK-605 Sonny's Shack (2-pack per kit) and the Randy Brown Models N-102 Fire Station.

The bright one on the left is to be a surf and scuba shop on the beach, hence the bright colors.  It "needs" an HO beach dude, on a surfboard, on the roof.
Remember, this is N, so HO is approx twice life size.  That should be a good size
for an advertising sign, eh?

It's sibling, in the middle, and the RB kit on the right haven't been assigned a specific purpose, just yet.  But they will be some sort of businesses.  Something for the beach.

On the bench now is the start of two more RB models, N-105P Paco's Tacos and N-905 Tiny's Diner.  No progress picture, as they are still piles of parts.  Here's the factory pictures: 

Yep, they'll also be on the beach modules.

I'm thinking that some small houses will be needed, and a couple of the 3-packs of Grandt_Line 300-8023 Reese St. Row Houses should be good.  That's six places, with optional additions to make them all unique.

Okay, change of subject here.  Another of my malingeringly slow projects is a Tam Valley Train Shuttle.  No longer available, it's a DCC exerciser for locomotives.  A loco can be set to any 2-digit address, and it'll be shuttled back and forth on a linear track.  How it works is clever.  After being told that such a circuit couldn't be done in DCC, they set out and did it.  It's a truly neat, unique product.  It handles a 99 possible 2-digit addresses, no programming.












I'm glad I bought one, along with the optional 2X16 display.  With that, it can accommodate locos with 4-digit addresses.  The address is programmed into the unit (it's trivial, even I can do it!)  I don't remember right off, but I think there's a limit of 16 of the 4-digit addresses. Don't quote me on that.

Any way, it's a quality little unit, with its' own DCC generation, so the only other thing needed is the supplied wall-wart. I'm putting mine in a small wood box, and mounting an ESU decoder tester on top.  All in all, a convenient stunt box/test station. 

My tester is a slightly older model board, but it looks quite similar.

So, I guess I am getting a little bit done, it just doesn't seem like it some times.  Oh, well . . .