Hidden progress

Got to spend some quality time in the shed today. Yah.

If I had soldered together a couple of random bits of brass into something vaguely approximating a prototypical object I would have felt like I made progress. Instead I spent the afternoon soldering up the power feeds for the loco depot on the middle module. Turn it over and nothing to show for 4 hours work. And, while I can now run a loco on all the tracks (bar some rail adjustments where things are a bit tight) , I still don't feel like I have achieved much at all. Just another box ticked, and a few more things to fix. At least the dead shorts I discovered were easy to find and fix.

And for some odd reason the Da DCC chips keep reverting to old deceleration settings. All a bit of a shock when one kills the juice and watch the loco sale blissfully on towards the end of the world.

Inspiration

Well, I must admit to being rather uninspired of late. I have not really lifted a tool in anger on the layout or picked up a plan. I have been doing a bit of research for a left field 2mm fine scale layout, but my brain is still mindful of having too many projects on the go at one time, so its in the box for the time being.

Today an off the cuff visit by an old friend and a suggestion to visit fielding to see if there was anything interesting their brought a bit of a surprise in the form of F163 running up and down the yard with 2 56' cars. A reminder that I need to come back to take some photos and do something useful with the bits I have from the 2mm association. Unfortunately I had no camera with me to record any of it.

Second up is the arrival of the September Railfan. Photos from lucky photographers of the Dl class moving. Also a great article on the Wairarapa rail cars with plenty of photos which is leading to deep primeval stirrings again on a Rimutaka incline layout. Unfortunately this beast is harder to keep in the cage. Maybe if I build some 3mm scale wagons it might go away....

Slow weekend

Not much has happened modeling wise in the last week. I've been out to the Man-sion several times but have not had the drive to do anything. probably because the jobs are not overly fun. Wiring up the loco depot trackage doesn't spin my wheels too much at the moment, nor does laying card to bring the level of the yard up higher so I don't have to waste a stack of ballast.

At some point I will have to sit down and compile a list of 'jobs to be done' with 1/2 an eye on the convention next year and the plan to have an 'operating' layout by that stage.

In other news the hunt for wagon wheelsets continues with feelers being out out to Dapol to see if they make anything usable that they are willing to sell. Also, who else is off to Railex in November or Pokaka a weekend later?

Up to the minute shots by our roving Otago reporter Mike H.

A test train with 2 of the new AK carriages. The first built by the railways since the second world war.

DCC; learning curve not leveling off yet

Well, I eventually got out to the shed in the weekend. one short job was to reprogram a couple of the chips. when I first had a play with them I set levels for acceleration and deceleration. While this was nice on the short track, on the layout it had a few problems. The Ed's don't pick up from a particularly long wheelbase and so stall from time to time. Now, if muggins sets the acceleration rate, when the power is interrupted the speed resets and starts again (this is why you need stay alive in sound equipped locos). This is not ideal at all, so I reset the acceleration rates to zero, but left the deceleration rates. This has solved most of the Ed running problems.

I was also using the digital camera to investigate some of the track work problems that I have found. I then realised that i could try to take some low angle shots of the locos.

'You would never see this in the journal.'

'Hmmm, wiggly...'

Hmm, it does look like crap at the moment up close. If you think your models look bad, here is real life warts and all

Readers will have also noticed that now if you click on a picture for a bigger view it goes to a separate slide show. No, I don't have any idea how or when it happened, or how to change it, so it's staying for the moment.

Cabbage does it again....

Am_Fet writes:

Things have been exceptionally quiet lately, and save for the fleeting visit of our NY based blog author its just been work and sleep basically. I was thinking the other day that I hadnt heard from Cabbage recently either...turns out hes been busy as well; Just look what turned up in my inbox on Friday:



"Its an Nz120 UK made up of only 2 etches" he stated. "Get a leave pass for Sunday and you can have a look at it". Who was I to turn down such an offer?

SO! Here it is in all its glory, an NZ120 UK in etched brass. It is deigned to be assembled WITHOUT SOLDER (all will be explained!). First, the etch:



The underframe is in one piece and folds up concertina fashion to provide the beams, side sills and twistlocks while the triangular supports fold down as well (one day I should learn wagon nomenclature):







The twistlocks can then be folded up into position, and quite easily too...Cabbage was doing about 1 a second using a "fold and crimp" action:



(And is that a handbrake lever I can see there?)

The last job is to take the deck (with shunters handgrab!)and fold the headstocks UNDER the beams, thus holding the whole thing in place. Of course, you could solder or glue it, and being underneath you could do it as badly as you wanted and no-one need know. :



Note this is still very much in the prototyping stage so could still be miles off (depending on what Cabbage's workload for his own stuff is), but he thinks it could be in the $15 range to produce. Still to be worked out are the bogie mounts and couplers, plus I believe the IA is getting drawn as well.

Possibly the most exciting thing I've received in my inbox this year....

Saturday Morning

Well, another morning here at Schloss Dandruff (I must fine a suitable Germanic font for that).

Not much modeling or thinking going on lately. I did a couple of 1 hr sessions out in the Man-sion during the week, but that was just installing power feeds and check rails, which from a blogging point of view is about as exciting as watching paint dry (however if there are those of you out there who would like live commentary on paint drying drop me a line. I think we can get help for you). I have been thinking about other projects on the layout though, and its occurred to me that I have not done any building modeling for over a year. something I need to sort out I think.I came across this picture last night which reminded me of the plan from almost exactly a year ago.

'Local spots of interest'

I've made a start on the base for the water tank. though I've made it a very tight squeeze between the main and loco depot tracks. The rest are just on hold waiting for that to get started.
At least they will all be cheap (the car had an expensive trip to the car hospital last week, which has left me wondering how I was able to drive it. it was making awful grinding noises though). I've just noticed that I have not included the signal boxes so that will ahve to be done as well.

I've also been musing (to myself) recently about the path not taken. Paekakariki is a project that does tick all the boxes, but in hind site maybe I would have had more fun building some smaller layouts instead. I've had a few ideas for small country stations that would have been interesting to build (and one day might actually get built). The flip side of this is that I would not have been forced to learn how to make track as if I only needed 3-4 points I would have brought PECO or Atlas(with some mutterings as I've never really liked the look) and I may well have not bothered as they woudl not have been challenging enough. With a large project the common problem of not finishing it is pushed so far out that it no longer becomes a problem. The flip side is that there are times when despite ones best efforts it appears that no progress is being made.

I might get out to the shed this afternoon, but there is beer to be bottled as well (which really needs to be done) and then the summer beers need to be put down as well. The weather is not good enough today to garden at least...