Stayin' Alive

We're still learners when it comes to this DCC malarkey, and every day is a school day.

Take my favourite loco in the Minffordd fleet, the Simplex Mary Ann for example.

When it was re-motored and chipped for its new digital life we managed to squeeze in a stay alive capacitor which was so effective the loco would continue to run for around 10 seconds after it was picked up off the track.

When he was giving the stock a once-over ready for the trip to Porthmadog last week Himself noticed the stay alive didn't appear to be functioning.

We hadn't noticed any particular problem with the loco at the show in Glasgow.

As usual it was superbly reliable and most problems seemed to be caused by route-setting errors resulting in short circuits. 

We did notice some of the other operators giving it a prod every now and then, but assumed that was just operator error.

It was after a while of puzzling that Himself discovered there is a CV setting on these chips which controls how long the stay alive supplies juice for, and adjusting that restored the function.

It was then that the penny dropped.

Towards the end of the first day at the Falkirk show last year Mary Ann developed a strange fault where all the DCC sounds played but there was no drive.

The solution was to reset the decoder - but we made a bit of a beginner's error!

We thought we had moved every other DCC loco to safety by taking them all to the upper fiddle yard and disconnecting the power supply.

We punched the buttons on the handset to reset Mary Ann and it sprung back to life!

And shortly after, every other one of our 009 steam engines began hissing in unison. 

They had all been reset, too!!

But how? We had disconnected the power supply to the fiddle yard!

It transpired that the joints between the scenic board and the yard were close enough that the rails in the yard were still getting some power.

So that was a fun 15 minutes resetting the numbers on every loco in turn....

It's only now we think back to this incident that we realise the CV to control the stay alive must have been reset to 0 in this process.

So much to learn...

'One Day' Projects.

Browsing my photo reel the other day I was reminded of another one of those project I'd always intended to get around to 'one day'.

Over the years we've built up a collection of rolling stock from the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway which we ran on Bron Hebog.

To start with it was a gentle 'wind up', at a time when relations between the railways were at a bit of a low.

Then it became something aspirational, and more recently, of course, it has become a reality.

To the best of my knowledge - although I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong - the four-wheeler number 6 has never ventured as far as Beddgelert.

I find it quite an intriguing design.

It's got the diminutive appeal of the classic narrow gauge four wheel carriage combined with the body style cues and proportions of the 'Eisteddfod coach', which was one of the first 009 kits I bought more than 35 years ago.

I've often thought about scratch building number 6.

Like the real thing I would most probably use a former RNAD wagon chassis, either from the 009 Society kit or one of the Bachmann wagons if I was feeling flush.

Over the years I've take quite a few photos of it, although never any proper measurements, but it would probably be easy enough to guestimate from the things we do know about it, such as the chassis dimensions.

Whether or not I ever will get round to it I'm not so sure.

With Bron Hebog no longer going out to shows there's not really any pressing need for it.

Secret Panels

Himself was thinking ahead and anticipating worst-case scenarios when he designed Minffordd, and he was careful to allow access in the event of a major failure or track relaying being required.

That's why there is a six-inch-long section of the narrow gauge lines at the Porthmadog end which can be lifted out to get at the Cambrian fiddle yard points hidden underneath.

At the moment he's investigating a curious fault with the route-setting function.

At each end of the Cambrian yard control panel is a rotary switch where the operator selects which road they require, press a single button, and a matrix of diodes and relays set the points accordingly.

During the Glasgow show we noticed when you had Road 1 selected, and wanted to change to Road 4 the 'king point'  - where roads 1-2 and 3-4 d split - would not move.

However, if you select Road 3 instead, the point will switch as it should, and you can then make a follow-up request for Road 4.

This explains a number of strange head-on collisions in the fiddle yard during the show which baffled the operators who were quite sure they had changed the points, and the LED indictor on the panel backed them up!

So one of the items on the snagging list to be tackled before the next appearance in Porthmadog is to find out what is causing this.

Removing this 'secret panel' makes it much easier to see what's going on under there and whether the point is being switched when it should be.

Yet Another Siding

Just as the scenic part of a layout is never finished it would appear that a fiddle yard certainly never is!

During the three-day show in Glasgow last month it became clear there was something lacking in the siding department on the narrow gauge side of Minffordd.

Spare freight stock for the yard shunting is kept on a standalone siding at the bottom end fiddle yard, which works in much the same way as the extension to the Mineral Line where you will often see a selection of FR wagons.

The trouble with just having a single siding is that if you wanted to get at the wagons at the far end you needed to lift off either them or everything else in the way in front of them.

We really should have given that more thought when we laid out the fiddle yard....

For the next show in Porthmadog Himself has invested in another set of points and laid a second siding, along with some uncoupling magnets.

Seeing Spots

"I've done something, and you're not going to like it!"

Ominous words from Himself a few days ago confessing that he'd taken an 'executive decision' to make life easier shunting wagons around Minffordd Yard.

There are all sorts of tricks layout builders use to mark the magic spots where automated uncoupling things are hidden.

On Minffordd we use magnets buried in the ballast for the Kadee couplings on the standard gauge and to animate the loops on the Greenwich couplers on the narrow gauge.

Some of the places are marked with a model person, and others with a sleeper placed beside the track, and many of the locations have some small bushes springing up as well.

The problem for Himself, and at least one other of our operators at the SEC show in Glasgow, is that they struggle to pick out the brown sleepers and the green bushes because they are red-green colour blind.

Himself has decided to try another trick which is to paint white dots on the shoulders of the sleepers either side of each magnet.

These, he hopes, will stand out like a sore thumb to him, and make shunting the narrow gauge a little less frustrating, with not so much shuffling backwards and forwards trying to stop the train in the correct spot over the magnet.

The trade-off is that while the marks may be more intrusive for the layout viewer, more reliable uncoupling might bring back a little more of the magic of hands-free, effortless uncoupling.

How do you get the balance right on your layout?

Youth Training Scheme

It's just a picture of some wires being soldered onto circuit boards, nothing significant going on here you might assume.

For me, at least, there is some significant, because these solder joints were done by my 13-year-old son - under the supervision of Himself - and a very neat job he's made of it, too don't you think?

You don't have to read many discussion forums or comments on social media posts before you come across someone opining that the model railway hobby is 'dying' or is going to.

And it's fair to say that if you glance around at the average exhibition you won't fail to notice there is a clear demographic.

I'm not sure the hobby is as doomed as some people would have you believe.

I doubt it will be as widespread and mainstream activity for young people as it was perhaps was for a couple of decades, but very few things are these days because there are so many leisure activities available.

At our annual club show which is a relatively small event in a large town, the vast majority of the people who come along are families with children.

They still like 'toy trains'. (I use the word intentionally)

What is important, I believe, is that model railway clubs make an effort to 'reach out' - to use a current buzz phrase - to be 'inclusive' (buzz, again) , and to actively encourage teenage modellers to experiment,  to learn, and yes, to make mistake and errors too.

At our club by son and his friend are building a 00 terminus layout, with help from the dads (and granddad).  

They came up with the concept, presented it to the committee as a project, and the club is funding it.

And that's how it should be.

Oh, and back to the picture.  I should have explained.

They're more frog juicers for the standard gauge fiddle yard on Minffordd.

Over the course of the show in Glasgow we discovered a lot of the point motors are not 100% reliable in always closing the point blades to switch the current, so we adding these onto every turnout in the hope that will solve the problem.

Take My Word For It

 

There hasn't been much modelling done here since the end of the Glasgow exhibition two and a half weeks ago.

The one small job I have done is to lightly weather the impulse buy inspection saloon.

The weathering is so light it might almost be non-existent, to the camera phone in any case.

I took it along to the the club night thinking the layout there would make a better backdrop than taking a snap on my messy workbench, but unfortunately the lighting didn't really allow what I've done to show itself.

So you'll have to take it from me that the bogies, the underframe, and the other previously shiny black parts have been given a subtle coating track grime.

The roof is also looking a bit more rain and soot streaked as well, and there's a hit of some of the dirt on the maroon tumble home.

I'm hoping it'll show up better under the lights, and looking at it with the naked eye, at the show in Porthmadog next month.