What is progress? Is it having more on your board than you had before or is it that some things that didn’t work well now work a bit better?

I had to replace a surface mounted point motor. Previously all units had passed well, albeit by a hair’s breadth. After replacement I discovered that the non-powered driver car of my push-pull double deck commuter rake (the first double deck units introduced by RENFE prior to the genuine EMUs) was hitting the motor. The point in question is situated right at the exit from a 90 degree curve (Hornby second radius) and since the coach has a good overhang ahead of the bogie, the front end was still way outside the track when it reached the motor. Since there was no way of replacing the motor on the other side of the track (lack of space) my first idea was to insert a short straight between the curve and the point. I thought I had a Hornby short straight left over, but I hadn’t, only a box of Lima short straights which are a good centimeter longer than the Hornby piece. I ripped up the track, immediately saw that a short straight would not fit in with the curved track, so I thought of a length of Peco flexible track. I started to doctor one length by removing bits from the split parts of the sleepers to tighten the curve, but soon realized that it would involve too much work and might not work either.

So, I relaid the original track and, since I had removed a power clip, which was several cms from where the hole for the droppers was located, I decided to try my hand at soldering droppers directly to the track and, fortunately, I was successful. I then set about observing the offending rolling stock and came to the conclusion that the simplest solution was to file away part of the undersurface of the vehicle, got hold of a file and removed about 1 mm from the snowplough arrangement and a little from the underside of the coach and this worked also. I do not know whether it is licit to mutilate rolling stock to solve problems but I did.

Encouraged by my soldering success, I turned to an old Lima locomotive (purchased nearly 40 years ago) which I had digitized without success (instead of running, when the power was applied the decoder switched off), had rewired in analogue state again but which would not run properly with the bodywork in place. The reason was that the wires I had used in certain places were too stiff and did not allow the motor bogie to rotate sufficiently on the curves. So, out came the soldering iron and solder again, I removed the offending wires and replaced them with finer ones and now the thing runs with the body on. I need this locomotive because I have a lot of old Lima rolling stock where the coupling height does not coincide with that of my more modern locomotives.

A couple of photos to show it, alone and with a rake of six goods wagons.

I then tried it out alone and it worked. Thereafter, I hooked on the six goods wagons and it laboured on the inclines (probably not more than 1/250), the wheels slipping and it needed a push by hand. I removed the heaviest truck and it still laboured, overheated my controller and finally gave up. I think I have probably irremediably damaged it.

That, then, is all the progress I have made.

To-day. Tuesday. I tried again and discovered that nothing had happened to the locomotive. It hauled a rake of four wagons, still labouring, but less, on the inclines (by the way, I mingled cms with mms when calculating the gradient, the gradients are between 1/25 and 1/30) and after a couple of trips round the circuit, it stopped dead again. This time I tested the track and this confirmed what I had observed yesterday - there was no curent in the track. It was the controller that had closed down, not the locomotive.