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Last minute snag

petertg

Entry posted by petertg

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Evening all:

This morning I had high hopes that to-day would see the finish of work on the underside of the baseboard. But there is still one problem bugging me. I can't get the station lights to work properly. My street lighting works, the yard lights work, but not the station lights. The funny thing is that if I apply the current from what should be the head end of the wiring there is no response, but if I apply current from the tail end, then they do light up. So, the obvious solution is to redo the wiring, but at 21.00 hrs I was tired, so tomorrow will see another session.

When I was wiring up the point motors, since I have the baseboard edge on upright, I can't see the top side when working on the bottom, so when testing the point motors I had to work by ear. All made sounds of working but, when I was able to have a look at the top side, one motor was not moving the blades, although it had made operational noises. I removed it and saw that the rocker arm which moves the points was damaged. However, since my son-in-law (a right handyman) was staying with us, I gave it to him and, more in hope than anger, asked him if he could open it (it was a Hornby surface mounted one) and he did so. The end of the arm mounted on the solenoid core had apparently been burnt. Somehow he repaired it with a bit of thin stiff wire and superglue and got it to work.

What I have done is tidy up the wiring of the droppers. When I first fitted them, I used terminal blocks and left long slack loops of wire and had to cover some connections with a piece of cardboard to avoid possible snagging. However, last year I acquired some new solder iron tips and some decent solder, so I decided to take advantage of the base board being uptipped to do some rearrangement.. A couple of photos to illustrate.

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Wired with terminal blocks.

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After tidying up. These pictures are not of the same area of the board. Thy represent one area before it was done and another area after it had been done.

I hope that to-morrow I can finally finish with ther underside of the base board.

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If your lights are LEDs they will only work with the current going one way - just swap the supply wires around!

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petertg

It turns out that the lights are LEDs. I had overlooked this fact because, when they were first installed, they were operated with 14 VAC and what led me astray was that, on changing to 12 VDC the other LED lights worked OK. They were obviously wired up correctly. However,  I have rewired them, and to be on the safe side, with their own particular negative return wire because previously the return was split two ways. Now all three sets of lighting work OK. Thanks for the tip, because I was unaware of this fact.

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