Hi,
As readers of the this blog may remember, our Group held its Open Weekend on 27/28 October 2012 and we were in attendance with Heworth Sidings. Although very little has been done scenically, we were hoping that we would still be able to put on a good show. It was also a great chance for us to 'feel our feet' with the layout and get some experience working with it and understanding how to operate it. Please note the structures seen on the layout are only temporary and intended to give a feel of the real scenery.
Saturday 27th
The day started with what was really a mad dash to fit some additional point motors to one end of the Fiddle Yard and to complete some wiring under the boards so that we could have 6 lanes running each way for storage. We finished this at about 11:30 and then had another mad dash to setup the layout as the doors were going to open to the public at 12:00. We weren't quite there for the doors opening, but by around 12:30 we had stock moving on the layout.
We had had some teething issues the last time out with the layout and I think this was because our Digitrax Duplex network was clashing with one of the other systems in our meeting room, so we moved away from the default settings, resetting the Wireless channel and providing a new name for the Duplex Network. These changes seemed to do the trick and we had no operational issues with the Duplex throttles over the weekend.
We encountered a minor issue towards the end of the day, as the Command Station started to give a 'Slot Max' error and the only way to clear this was to 'Dispatch' a loco before we were able to select another one. Again though, this is a default setting with the command station and easily changed. A minor interruption in the running soon had it fixed as the slot buffer was first purged, then the buffer itself increased from the 20 addresses to 120.
We were also using a couple of LocoBuffer's to interface to the LocoNet, one was being used to provide JMRI WiThrottle access and the other being used to provide a Mimic Panel for the layout again using JMRI PanelPro.
Here is a short video taken towards the end of the day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J8jebnOo0U&feature=share&list=UUBvlPo8CarzfAayTIRL_ymA
Sunday 28th
With no setup time needed, we were immediately able to start running our locos and for me and one of our other members it was time to turn Heworth Sidings into Heworth Subdivision for a few hours and run some of our US stock. Having access to a large Fiddle Yard and quite a large layout (54') meant that we could have another go at running a prototypical US Coal train, which regularly run upwards of 100 Bethgons. In the end we managed 144 Bethgons pulled by 4 SD90/43MACS.
Playing over with, during the afternoon we tried our hand at some more prototypical movements with the layout. One of which is caught in the video.
All in all, I think it was a very successful weekend for the layout, we had very few issues and when we did these mainly fell into the operator error or problem stock categories.
Here is a slightly longer video of the days activities. There is also a little section showing a layout called 'Peacehaven' an SR layout being built by another of our group members:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64h2F_jpnCI&feature=share&list=UUBvlPo8CarzfAayTIRL_ymA
Cheers, Mark.
- 2
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