Hi,

Well, we've got the first public event under our belts as we attended the Middleton Railway Exhibition 2015 at the weekend. I was really impressed with the way the layout performed and also how we operated it during the weekend. More so when you consider that as a group of individuals, this is the first Exhibition layout we have built and operated. That's not to say we didn't have a few teething problems along the way, we did.......

Friday 26th - Setting Up

We'd arranged with Middleton that we would be there to start setting up around 15:00, the idea being we could take our time and make sure everything was up and running OK for the next day. We started setting up the modules and levelling out the layout, this took us around an hour and a half, and left us with plenty of time to start doing other little jobs. As we've been doing allot of scenic work over the past few weeks, the track on the scenic modules had gotten quite dirty, so we gave it a pass with track rubbers. Then as we still had loads of time and we needed to attach a signalling module to one of the scenic boards to get the signals working properly, out came the soldering iron / wire and off I went fitting the module. Now having fitted 4 of these modules already, this was a routine job, mount the board, provide a DCC / 12v DC feed from the bus wires, connect up the signals and job done. After about 30 mins, everything was finished, time to get the module back in place, connect up the bus wiring and give the layout a test.

However, when we switched on the control systems, our PM42 was flashing erratically along with the LED on the PSU powering it. As the PSU was new, the first instinct was to suspect it was duff, so we disconnected it. This meant that we wouldn't have power districts until we got a replacement, but we just wanted to test the layout, so that wasn't really a problem. The PSU could be swapped out the next day for one that we knew worked OK.

Anyway, on with the testing and the layout, which seemed to be going as expected, our test loco's doing loop after loop while we placed buildings and setup the catenary masts on the layout. Happy that things were OK apart from the PSU, we decided to call it a night, but before I left I decided to just run a loco up and down all of the on-scene and off-scene sidings, to make sure the track was nice and clean. With the testing almost complete, I decided to run the loco back round to the fiddle yard, rather than just lift it off the layout. In hindsight this proved to be a very good decision, as one of the slow action motors on the pair of points that control access to the off-scene sidings decided to fail.

Lessons to learn:

1. Don't take untested equipment to an exhibition
   
2. Make sure to bring along the spares that you've bought for the layout
   

Saturday 27th

Loaded up with replacement PSUs for the PM42 and another slow action TT300 Point Motor, I set off early so that I had some time to sort out the issues. I started by replacing the PSU for the PM42, but when I connected the power the unit was still not running and I suspected that for whatever reason the PM42 had given up on us. To compound the problem, we use the PSU that supplies the PM42, to provide power to the MERG accessory decoders fitted to the Fiddle Yard to drive the solenoid motors and these were also out of action. I decided to isolate the PM42, disconnecting it from the PSU, but this didn't restore the control of the Fiddle Yard points. In the midst of the blind panic I was descending into, a moment of clarity struck me, so I disconnected the bus feeds from the Fiddle Yard to the rest of the layout and suddenly everything sprang back to life. Including the PM42 when I re-connected the power to it.

Knowing that the Fiddle Yard and control systems were working OK, the only other explanation was that we had a wiring issue out on the main board somewhere, so I started systematically adding module after module until the fault re-occurred. No prizes for guessing where I found the fault, yes, on the board that I'd fitted the signalling module to. As long as we didn't connect the bus feeds at both end of the module, everything was up and running correctly. As the other guys had started to arrive by now, they started to stock up the Fiddle Yard, while I set about replacing the TT300 point motor. I'd already set the DCC address for the unit, so once it had been swapped out we were fully operational.

With only 10 minutes to go before the doors opened, we gave a crash course on how to operate the layout using JMRI to a couple of our club members who had arrived to help us and then we were off. During the first few hours, I think it was safe to say we had a few mishaps running the layout, but these were mainly down to getting things in and out of the Fiddle Yards as people got used to the controls, once the stock was moving it was all pretty much trouble free. The biggest issue we we're having was that for some reason, we were losing control of certain loco's as they were handed off between our Digitrax hand throttles and the JMRI computer control. Basically the operator on the front of the layout would return a loco to the Fiddle Yard as part of an industry movement, but then the JMRI software wasn't able to then control the loco. It seemed locked to the hand throttles and nothing seemed to work to free it up. By around lunch time, we'd got quite a number of these loco's which could only be controlled by hand throttles and they were starting to cause problems for the operators as they had to remember which loco's could be controlled from the JMRI system and which were working from the hand throttles.

To sort out this creeping problem, we decided to re-start the Command Station and purge all of the loco addresses. We'd also sorted out which loco's were going to be used for block trains (run from the Fiddle Yard) and which were going to be used to drop off and pick up wagons from the Industry Sidings (run from the hand throttles), so we decided to make sure that we didn't swap them between the two roles. This immediately seemed to be working better and we had much more success driving the locos and the operators had much more time to concentrate on what they were doing.

Lessons to learn:

1. Don't perform last minute changes to wiring on the eve of a show (really this should be added to Fridays list!)
   
2. Have a plan and clear rules for Operation
   

Sunday 28th

We made sure we started the day as we finished Saturday, with our new rules of operation. We also did a pre-emptive purge of the Command Station at the start of the day as well. We decided to rotate some of the stock to give a bit more variation and ended up putting on some Nuclear Flasks and some 350 DMU's. The Flasks were being run with a pair of 37's and the 350's were going to be run together, so they needed to be consisted. As they were going to be run in and out of the Fiddle Yard, then we decided to consist them with JMRI as we would use the JMRI throttles to control them. This appeared to be going well, the JMRI system provides a nice enough form to set them up and then you just call up the primary loco address on the main throttle and use that. However, this seemed to re-introduce the problem with locos becoming unresponsive, so we ditched the idea, purged the Command Station again and reverted back to the way we had run things the day before.

Lessons to learn:

1. If you have a plan of Operation and it's working for you, don't change it
   

Conclusion

I'd like to have been writing this reporting that everything went smoothly, but it was a real roller coaster of an experience for us. Over the 3 years that we've had our layout operational, it's never caused any major problems, so I guess we paid the price for being a bit over confident with it. There really is no substitute for being prepared and making changes on the eve of a show is a little silly. Also, it's important to have at least trialled the operation of the layout and we have on many occasions said we were going to do this, but for one reason or another, it's just didn't happen.

I'm pleased to be able to say though, that despite some operational glitches, we were able to put on a good show for people. We received allot of positive comments about the layout, our stock and how well it was running which was very nice. Allot of people were very interested in how we were controlling the locos, as they could see the JMRI system on the laptops at each end of the Fiddle Yard and it was nice to be able to give them some advice about how they could use something similar for their layouts.

Anyway this post would be pretty useless without some pictures / video from the weekend.

Cheers, Mark.