Santa Barbara in N scale_ at the NMRABR 2022 convention near Crewe

[roundhouse]

This morning I was up early as the car alarm went off for some unkown reason. So I did some wiring under one of the boards and fitted the first of the sockets for the speakers. Tonight it will be wiring up the three remaining sockets then load the layout into the car ready for High Wycombe tomorrow.

 

Really hoping that we can have the sound system fully working tomorrow.. fingers crossed.

[298]

This morning I was up early as the car alarm went off for some unkown reason.

 

Because it's a Chrysler...?

 

Looking forward to seeing the layout tomorrow...!!

[roundhouse]

It was the Dodge actually. Its not done that before to our knowledg. Speaker wiring done and the layout is now loaded into the Chrysler. Stock and DCC etc. will be loaded tomorrow morning.

 

Ian

[roundhouse]

We had the sound system working at the High Wycombe show but not the full effect. It's nearly there but just need to work out what I address I need to enter into the Surroundtraxx box as it wants a three digit number but the Digitrax BDL, 168 / RX4 was giving us four digit address for the zones.

 

A little bit more reading and all should be working for the layouts next show at Alton in February 2013.

 

The layout generally ran well but we did have a few occasions where the 12 foot long trains decided to split the in two and the usual problem of not all the turnouts in a route throwing... its very difficult to back up such long trains without them coming off the rails. Not really sure why some turnouts dont throw as they all work fine inidivdually and each of the Digitrax DS64's have a capacitor discharge in them. Its worse as the venues warm up. We do have a system where by the operator at the other end checks the route is set but occassionally they are busy or distracted and thats the very time the route doesnt set properly.

 

Ian

Edited November 5, 2012 by roundhouse

[sunshine coast]

Roundhouse,

re- your problems with points etc..... I have come across this problem in the past several times....as you mention it gets worse as the venue heats up,I would check you have enough expansion gaps...I have known points to very slightly bulge and buckle as the rail expansion puts pressure on them,it does not take much .5mm is enough to cause problems..... the buckling will give problems with the turnout throwing cleanly and derailments...

 

Regards Trevor ...

[roundhouse]

Trevor

 

Thanks for the heads up. I will have a look at this just in case. However, as I have cut through the blade rails to isolate the frogs, there should be enough expansion gap.

 

We tend not to get any derailwments on the turnouts but if we try reversing the train then we get stock popping off the rails due to the weight of the train behind the locos.

[sunshine coast]

Trevor

 

Thanks for the heads up. I will have a look at this just in case. However, as I have cut through the blade rails to isolate the frogs, there should be enough expansion gap.

 

We tend not to get any derailwments on the turnouts but if we try reversing the train then we get stock popping off the rails due to the weight of the train behind the locos.

 

Ian,

also worth checking the outer rails as they have an area machined out to accept the point blade,and this weakens them and makes them more likely to distort and jam the tie-bar....

 

I did see one N layout, which had been moved from a cold damp outbuilding into a very hot centrally heated room,the expansion and shrinkage of the boards managed to destroy 37 sets of Peco points........some of them were bowed up from the boards more than 1/2 an inch ...not good!

 

Regards Trevor........

[roundhouse]

Trevor

Will have a look. Luckily the garage is insulated so it rarely gets any great heat extremes.

 

One problem we did have was with the plasitc tie bars melting when the blades threw with the solenoids. The momentary polarity change caused heat build up and melted the tie bars and thus distorting the blades, causing derailments on a few turnouts. This has been cured by isolating the frog from the blades.

 

Some of the fiddleyard forgs are now switch by Hex Frog Juicers. and eventaully all will be converted as they are proving extremely reliable. We did have one turnout frog go dead on occassions at the last show but the Hex Frog Juicers will eliminate this (as they have on the rest of the layout and on Banbury which uses the same fiddleyard).

 

They should all be converted by the time the layout goes to Alton in February 2013.

 

Ian

[roundhouse]

We will be at the Alton Show this weekend with Santa Barbara.

 

A few bits of new rolling stock to test run.

 

Also hoping to have the Surroundtraxx fully working if i can work out how to programme the sound sounds into the box of tricks (the transponding works, however it gives a 4 digit address and the Surroundtraxx box only take a 3 dgiit address) otherwise it will just be non moving sound, although this still works well, especially as we can control the overall sound level with just one volume knob.

 

Ian

[Lawrence]

Really like the station scene Ian, super work.  Do you ever come North of the Border with the layout? The only one I go to down South is Wigan so be interested to know if you are going there too.

[roundhouse]

Thanks Lawrence

 

The furthest North we have been with the layout is Barrow In Furness, but we can go anywhere as we tend to build layouts that fit in our own vehicles to keep the expenses down, and Santa Barbara will fit in our current vehicle along with four operators with a top up with help from our North Western helpers.

 

Santa Barbara does have an invite to the Newcastle Upon Tyne show for November 2014.

 

No invite to date for Wigan.

 

Ian

[Adrian Wintle]

yes these thinner boards dont seem to fit as well as the older style.

I sometimes use a bit of plastic to wedge under the decoder.

 

Interestingly, the three decoders I just got (new stock) all fit perfectly and worked without any tweaking. Two DN163K1Cs in Kato Dash 9s and a DN163A0 in an Atlas GP40. They seemed to be a little thicker than the previous ones.

 

Adrian

[roundhouse]

Thanks Adrian

 

I will watch out for the new ones over here and see how they perform but sounds like good news

 

Ian

[roundhouse]

Car loaded with the layout and stock etc to be loaded in the morning and then head off to the Alton show.

[roundhouse]

We had a good day yesterday with the layout. Now have the Surroundtraxx sound working fully on three sound zones. One isn't working yet so a bit of investigation this morning before the show opens will hopefully resolve it.

 

Ian

Edited February 3, 2013 by roundhouse

[roundhouse]

On our way home from the Alton show.

 

Another very enjoyable weekend and a busy show.

 

This morning I managed to find out why one speaker out of the four wasn't working. nothing to do with my wiring but it was down to the connector on the circuit board of the Surroundtraxx system that had flux on the pins but no solder causing an intermittent connection.

 

All the speakers now work. However one of the transponding zones isn't working so that will require some investigation under the board back at home.

With the three zones that were working, the Surroundtraxx sound system performed very well.

 

Thanks goes to to Kevin of Coastal DCC who gave me a crash course in some advanced features of JMRI regarding setting up block detection etc.

 

Must now turn my attention to Banbury for a little while before doing much more to Santa Barbara although any work on the fiddle yard will benefit both!

 

Ian

[roundhouse]

On our numerous visits to Santa Barbara we have noticed the large number of homeless people and also many living in old RV's. I have modelled  one of these RV's next to one of the warehouses.

 

Most of the homeless people are harmeless so it doesnt put us off visting the town. Some of them are interesting characters to say the least and can often be seen doing some amuzing things whilst we are waiting for the train at the station. The best one so far was a bloke pushing a shopping cart. The contents included a butterfly net but the childs multicoloured old style phone in red with yellow handpiece was in use - he was calling the WHite House asking for George Bush as he pushed the cart along the platform past us . What made it even more amuzing is that this was last year, some years since 'W' had left the building!!

 

Hhowever, many are ordinary normal people that have fallen on hard times.

 

This is an interesting article as to why there are quite a few living in old RV's... doesnt say much for the state of the American economy though!

 

http://news.sky.com/story/1048135/car-sleepers-us-middle-class-hit-by-crisis

 

Ian

Edited February 6, 2013 by roundhouse

[trisonic]

I haven't seen many around New Jersey - probably too bloody cold.

The economy ain't as bad as it was - look at the recent investments by CSX and NS alone.

Best, Pete.

[roundhouse]

Pete

 

Exactly and Santa Barbara is a pleasant temperature most of the year.

Only once in November did we need to out the room heater on due to a particularly cool night.

It can rain pretty hard there though. I remember one time that we got soaked walking the short distance from the hotel on the sea front to the station. We decided to pay the extra for the sleeper to Seattle so we could hang our clothes up to dry.

 

Ian

[trisonic]

Yeah,  Ian, we get that too - except you end up suffering from exposure in the Winter!

 

Hope no one is going to Boston, Mass, this weekend..................."Extreme Snow" forecasted.

 

Best, Pete.

[roundhouse]

No, only Bognor Regis and Chichester this weekend.

 

Maybe Boston this summer though!

[Adrian Wintle]

Hope no one is going to Boston, Mass, this weekend..................."Extreme Snow" forecasted.

Presumably that's the 'winter storm' that we are supposed to get tonight/tomorrow/friday morning... up to 6" snow in the Toronto area

 

Adrian

[trisonic]

No that one is being dwarfed by a Nor'easter coming up the coast. GFS was predicting between 30" and 48" for us , earlier....

 

Best, Pete.

[roundhouse]

As the Derby show is not too far off today I decided to do a bit of behind the scenes work on the layout.
The recently obtained 2nd hand all in one touch screen pc has been set up in the fiddleyard and the trsck plan tweeked to fit the screen better
Now just trying to work out how to get JMRI to see the input from the microswitches next to the turnouts and wired to the DS64s.



Earlier this morning I detailed an NS SD70Mac that my other half bought at Ally Pally.
She's keen on me building sonewhere such as Roanoke, VA but in the meantime it will be seen as leased power on Santa Barbara.
A couple of shots taken this afternoon in the fiddleyard. Excuse the glass but we have got to use up all those bottles of beer cluttering the place!!

Edited April 29, 2013 by roundhouse

[roundhouse]

This evening I took the body off the Bachmann DD40X to fit a Digitrax |RD1 transponder decoder. Its relatively small but depeite the size of the loco, most of the space is taken up with the split chassis, two motors circuit board and factory fitted decoder. I suppose that I could have unsoldered the decoder and replaced it with a Digitrax one. However this newer version of the model has a removable weight in the fuel tank for a speaker housing.
So this weight was removed to leave bags of room for the transponder

Before fitting the transponder was programmed on the test track to the same 4 digit number as the preserved DD40X (6936) and CV29 set to 38.

Once done, the transponder wires were fed between the chassis sides and up to the circuit board where they were soldered onto the factory fitted decoder terminals. Bodey and fuel tank repalced, the loco was put on the layout and the system recognised the loco and gave the loco number reading as it entered a transponding section.

The Surroundtraxx system was plugged in and this loco added into the Surroundtraxx roster. We now have the DD40X with sound!


A bit of tweeking of the Surroundtraxx system sounds so that htey fade in and out as they pass through the sound zones has improved the sound set up. Now just need to set up the rest of the scenic boards to test all the sound zones.

Less than two weeks to go to the Derby show where hopefully we will have the sound system in full use along with a subwoofer.

The beauty with this system is that all loco sounds can be cnotrolled with just one knob so we can adjust the overall sound to suit the exhibition encvironment and thus hopefully avoid annoying other exhibitors and also isitors when they are looking at other layouts.

Ian

Edited May 8, 2013 by roundhouse