Weathering Bogies

I tried my hand at some bogie weathering. I think the bogies do not stand out enough when our models are brand new and a bit of weathering seems to suffice. I was surprised to even see the manufactures name stamped on the bogies! Very good job by Auscision Models.  I am pretty happy with the results.

For you to guess which loco this is.  
 

Some Rail Action

I thought I'd take some footage of some of the movements on the layout during this month.  I enjoy main line running - geez I don't know when was the last time I did any serious shunting on the layout even though it was designed with shunting operations, however I enjoy mainline operations alot more.

Hope you like the action:

Engine problems

 

My Trainorama S Class locomotive stopped running and it sounded like a gear had come off so I had to investigate further.

Upon opening up the locomotive I couldn't find the problem at first.  Later I saw there was indeed a connecting rod which had come loose.  I inserted said rod into place.

When power was applied, i noticed that the rear wheels (Bogie B End) were not moving - even though the connecting rod was in place - very strange.

Pulling out the rear bogie and then the holding plate to check the gears inside revealed all was okay!

Then I noticed something missing - a small pin that secures one of the inner gears in place was missing

I found a Moderatec steel pin which is used for moving the points which fits perfectly for the job - all I had to do was cut it down to size - inserting it into the hole to secure the gear and applying some glue fixed the issue.

On another note, I've noticed the Walker RM seems to play up - I think there is some issue with the motor as if it tries to negotiate a tight curve, the Rail Motor stops.  If I lift the middle compartment off the rails at this very location , the motor begins to work and the wheels turn - seems to be related to the torque of the motor.  The middle compartment is where the motor is housed.  Very weird.

Anyone else experience a similar issue on their model railway ?

Some Scenery Work

 I've been motivated to do some scenery work to smooth out some of the "rough" edges on the layout. 

One of these was the station platform which is a piece of wood.  This needed some attention so I took the spray paint out and gave it a coat.

Following this I had some picket fences which I had bought some while back and at last I got to erect them - now it looks little more like a railway station.  

Another area I focused on was a corner section which needed some scenery.  I grounded some bark for the ground cover and then added some foliage to continue the scene as there was a noticeable gap in this area - still need to add ballast to many sections of the layout.

Yet another section was the area that I had to pull up to realign the track as discussed in one of the previous blog posts.  This area looked pretty bad so I was compelled to look at it.  I think once I get some ballast on the tracks this area will look better but so far I am quite happy with it for now.

Yet another area I worked on was the cutting - looked pretty bare without any ground cover - so I looked at increasing the appeal of the cuttings with some ground foam and some woodland scenic fine leave foliage

With time spent on the scenery, there is little or no time spent running any trains.

SSD into Laptop

Since I have been using my old HP 2000 laptop to run JMRI and DCC++, the boot up time is extremely slow, taking minutes to boot up into JMRI which I have configured to autostart - so I decided to install a SSD I had lying round. First I had to take a backup of my current .jmri folder and also export the roster so I could then bring it into the new JMRI. Removing the old Hard Drive from the laptop is very easy. Took me about under 5 mins. 

Once the new SSD was installed, I booted into a Linux USB image which allowed me to install the Linux (Fedora 34) distribution. After downloading and installing the latest production version of JMRI, I had to then download Oracle JAVA - JMRI didn't link the default openJava. 

Following this I made some configuration changes e.g. I like to see the date, time and day on the desktop clock and also assigning custom short keys for example to shutdown the laptop at the end of the day - then I did an update on the OS to keep the system up to date and rebooted. 

Now JMRI comes up within 30 seconds compared to previously when it took minutes and it shuts down in 5 secconds.

I am very pleased that the Walker RM does not derail on the section of the layout that I pulled up and realigned. 

I haven't run the Y Class for a while. I noticed it would derail at certain sections of the layout. Running No.1 end, No.2 end bogies would derail. 

I think the Y Class has a broken gear on the No.2 end bogies but I really didn't want to pull up the bogies - so I used my hand made wheel gauge and noticed that the wheels were about .5mm too wide - so using a flat head screw driver I pushed the wheels together and gave it another few laps on the layout and quite amazing - no more derailments! Very happy. 

One of the Tortoise point motors that I had to move from last week, the actuating wire came out of the point hole - I knew it was just not long enough - so I used some aircraft lever wire that I had bought sometime back to replace it.   Had to shave off some of the material on one end to fit into the tortoise point motor hole which was done using a small hobby drill with a drill brush - worked a treat.

Arduino Coding 

Made an adjustment to the automatic signalling - previously after a movement completed two inner laps, the Automatic signal would be set to a Yellow aspect, but if the movement continued again into the inner lap, the signal would stay at Yellow once the movement went passed the signal.  It now displays Red (so the detection is now working).  I usually run a movement like this - Staging --> two inner laps --> station --> staging, however when I am troubleshooting things, or when the guys come over, I will let the movement run like this: staging --> two inner laps --> station --> two inner laps --> station (and on and on) until I set the switches for the movement to exit to staging.

I still have to work on the signalling on the UP end of the yard.  The code needs to be cleaned up - the DN end is working beautifully.  I can enable the signalling on this section to be "manual" or when running continuously, the HOME signals to be in "auto" mode.  

Track Realignment

Busy weekend as I decided to lift up some trackwork. There were frequent derailments on this section, espically with the Walker Railmotor, and have been trying to fix the issue piece-meal. I decided to bite the bullet and pull up the track work and try and fix the issue once and for all. The curve is slightly broader and the point work to staging has also been worked on. Looks alot better now. Will need to run a few more movements over the track work and then reballast and apply scenery. Had to reposition three tortoise points - was quite a big job - hopefully this will stop the incessant derailments on this section of the layout. I think the Walker RM derails because the passenger bodies are too light and need to be weighed down some how since the motor is in the middle of the consist. Did open it up to add weight but could not find any suitable location within the body and also underneath the frame. The Walker RM is the one that gives me the most headaches with derailments. At least the B Class loco runs now without any derailments on this section of track.

As can be seen here - the curve goes out little futher

Scenery work continues

With the wind in the sails, I continued to work on the scenery trying to lift the scenes on the layout. Still haven't finished the scenes yet. Saturday morning began with making some more fences - took about one hour to cut to length the posts and glue them. The next day paint was applied. Bought some smallish trees from amazon and dulled them down a bit to remove the shine and planted a few for now. Also looked at improving the road crossing section by adding some texture and atmosphere. On Sunday evening, the fences that were made were erected. Need to build a few more. I was thinking about how to paint the level crossing unbroken line near on the road near the rail line. Eventually I will look at installing flashing warning lights on approach of a movement - however I will need some sort of override as movements stop to change crew here before departing on to their final journey. With time spent on the scenery, unfortuantely there is no time running trains. The weekend was another cold one.