Easton, Isle of Portland

[Mick Bonwick]

Back to electrickery today, and working towards a mimic panel for the fiddle yard. I set to and worked out exactly how many wires need to be connected from the fiddle yard to the mimic panel and, of course, found that I didn't have enough terminals on the DB25 connectors I had bought some time ago. I ordered some more and found that, also to be expected, the price had gone up. I do have enought do the first half of the panel, though, so planned it all out in a little more detail and prepared the area for a start tomorrow.

 

 

I also managed to find the power manager that will be used to create 4 power districts. That might be installed tomorrow, but, on the other hand . . . . . .

 

 

 

.. . . . . . . . . it might take a bit of time interpreting all those instructions.

 

[NHY 581]

36 minutes ago, Mick Bonwick said:

Back to electrickery today, and working towards a mimic panel for the fiddle yard. I set to and worked out exactly how many wires need to be connected from the fiddle yard to the mimic panel and, of course, found that I didn't have enough terminals on the DB25 connectors I had bought some time ago. I ordered some more and found that, also to be expected, the price had gone up. I do have enought do the first half of the panel, though, so planned it all out in a little more detail and prepared the area for a start tomorrow.

 

 

I also managed to find the power manager that will be used to create 4 power districts. That might be installed tomorrow, but, on the other hand . . . . . .

 

 

 

.. . . . . . . . . it might take a bit of time interpreting all those instructions.

 

 

[Stubby47]

Again, in the previous post, Rob has highlighted all the text he understands.

[bgman]

33 minutes ago, Stubby47 said:

Again, in the previous post, Rob has highlighted all the text he understands.

 

He's not alone ! 

[Oldddudders]

No-one ever said Digitrax instruction manuals were the easiest to understand.

[Mick Bonwick]

13 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

No-one ever said Digitrax instruction manuals were the easiest to understand.

 

I know why that is!

[nickwood]

39 minutes ago, Mick Bonwick said:

 

I know why that is!

 

Why?

 

[Mick Bonwick]

 

11 hours ago, nickwood said:

 

Why?

 

 

12 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

No-one ever said Digitrax instruction manuals were aren't the easiest to understand.

[Tony Teague]

Ahh! The pure simplicity of DCC!

Edited June 15, 2020 by Tony Teague

[Oldddudders]

28 minutes ago, Tony Teague said:

Ahh! The pure simplicity of DCC!

DCC is simple - but if offers infinite levels of complexity if you wish to take advantage of every digital opportunity. Many of us don't. But there is nothing new about people who design clever things being unable to explain how they work in simple terms. 

[Mick Bonwick]

1 hour ago, Tony Teague said:

Ahh! The pure simplicity of DCC!

 

 This statement could be the start of a major discussion. Or, for the military minded, and allowing for inflation, a general debate.

 

Starting with an oval of track and one siding, straight DC (!) and basic DCC are quite different in cost, but no different in wiring.

 

Progress to a double oval with several sidings and independent control of two trains (regardless of vehicle numbers) the wiring gets more complicated, but still manageable.

 

Once the points are remotely controlled (electrically) the wiring requirement grows and complexity increases, but I think that there is still not much to choose between the two methods other than, arguably, cost. I haven't done any pricing research, though, so somebody might well come along and clarify that.

 

A big differentiator is the addition of sound, whether it is on a DCC or a DC layout. That really pushes up the cost but, unless a large traction collection is involved, it would, at worst, only halve the number of locomotives that could be afforded.

 

These observations are based upon my own experiences, you understand. There are probably many readers of this who will have different experiences. And views!

 

 

[Tony Teague]

1 hour ago, Mick Bonwick said:

 

 This statement could be the start of a major discussion. Or, for the military minded, and allowing for inflation, a general debate.

 

Starting with an oval of track and one siding, straight DC (!) and basic DCC are quite different in cost, but no different in wiring.

 

Progress to a double oval with several sidings and independent control of two trains (regardless of vehicle numbers) the wiring gets more complicated, but still manageable.

 

Once the points are remotely controlled (electrically) the wiring requirement grows and complexity increases, but I think that there is still not much to choose between the two methods other than, arguably, cost. I haven't done any pricing research, though, so somebody might well come along and clarify that.

 

A big differentiator is the addition of sound, whether it is on a DCC or a DC layout. That really pushes up the cost but, unless a large traction collection is involved, it would, at worst, only halve the number of locomotives that could be afforded.

 

These observations are based upon my own experiences, you understand. There are probably many readers of this who will have different experiences. And views!

 

 

 

Mick

 

I do understand - I was just being a bit provocative (unusually!).

Your description of the differences and why you might choose between them seem about right to me.

Certainly there is no right answer, just two alternates.

My apologies if it transpires that I started a further CD / DCC debate on your thread!

 

Best wishes

 

Tony

[Mick Bonwick]

On 14/06/2020 at 17:19, Mick Bonwick said:

I also managed to find the power manager that will be used to create 4 power districts. That might be installed tomorrow, but, on the other hand . . . . . .

 

 

It wasn't.

 

For a change, I sat and listened to music and wondered how to fit the largest possible speaker into a Heljan Crompton , to go with the Paul Chetter sound project that I had obtained from Digitrains. The orginal PCB will be discarded and all the wiring will be connected directly to the Zimo decoder. I have a plan and, if I remember, will relate it tomorrow and include some photographs, as long as I remember to take some.

[Mick Bonwick]

I have not found any evidence to show that diesels ran to Easton.

 

I have posted that in the hope that some knowledgeable soul will immediately produce copious and colourful photographic evidence that they did. I am not holding my breath, though.

 

During the time that I intend to operate Easton's representation in my model, there were Crompton Type 3s on order, but they were late in being delivered. There were some Sulzer Type 2s loaned by (purloined from?) the Midland Region to address the shortfall, thus giving me the opportunity to add two classes of diesel to my locomotive roster.

 

There were some Bachmann 24s and some Heljan 33s in my collection (before it was disposed of) that had been earmarked for Easton, and I had made a start on weathering them, and done some early sound fitting on the 24 (South West Digital on LokSound V3.5) and preparation on the 33 (filing away the cast chassis block to accept a 100-ohm speaker enclosure.) Time marched on, SLW introduced their 24 and smaller speakers became available.

 

The sound fitted 24s are already under test around the layout, but the 33s I had were of the older variety in that they were the right colour schemes but the wrong roof profile and components. I now have one of the later manufactured but more correctly portrayed early models and have disassembled it to check the available room for more current sound fittings. Once the body had been removed, without damaging the finely detailed buffer beam components, I decided to do the work on an older chassis, just to be sure it was possible to do what I wanted.

 

Here you see the older chassis at the front, with PCB removed and wiring stripped back from the 2-pin plugs that Heljan use. The newer, still intact, chassis is at the back - they are pretty much identical. The lights have been removed as well because the incandescent bulbs will be replaced by LEDs and operated by separate functions.

 

The speaker encolsure has been supported on a mounting cut from 1mm greyboard, a new central strip has been cut from the same material to support the decoder, and another support fitted at the other end with the intention of adding a capacitor if I decide to do that.

 

 

Why did I use greyboard? Because I knew where that was and couldn't immediately find my box of plastic card.

[Stubby47]

Not sure how you'll fit those Logitech speakers in but will be good to watch...

[Crisis Rail]

On 02/06/2020 at 17:57, Tony Teague said:

 

I use these where, on my home-based layout, baseboards or parts of them need to be removable:

 

 

Clearly they require a tag strip and soldeing approach but they are >5A rated.

 

Tony

 

Do you work for BT? 

[Tony Teague]

21 minutes ago, Crisis Rail said:

 

Do you work for BT? 

 

Good lord no!

(I don't work at all - it's just a distant memory...)

What on earth did I do that gave you that impression?

Tony

[Mick Bonwick]

20 hours ago, Tony Teague said:

 

What on earth did I do that gave you that impression?

 

 

Use lots of wire all the same colour. Have you ever seen the inside of a telephone exchange, or even a street cabinet?

 

Edited June 17, 2020 by Mick Bonwick

[Mick Bonwick]

Time to start the connecting of wires from decoders and point motors to the control panel DB25 connectors. I'd created some diagrams with colours on them to help visualise the way things would work. This helps me to work out what should go where and why.

 

A good few years ago I was taught to use bootlace ferrules to terminate wires that would be used on screw terminals. Not everybody likes this method, as I have found out more recently, but it has worked very well for me and I intend to continue this way. The first wire end was located (I had put labels at both ends of each wire!) and I was ready to go.

 

 

While I was working my way through the list, I discovered that there were three decoders that hadn't been wired up, so there was a good reason for doing things methodically. It also slowed me down a bit because I had to remove all the boxes from underneath the layout again. By the end of the day I had got this far.

 

 

I may manage to get on a bit quicker tomorrow. Only another five to do. . . . .. . .

Edited June 17, 2020 by Mick Bonwick
Putting in missing letters and removing excess ones.

[Stubby47]

How are the wires kept in the ferrules?

[Mick Bonwick]

9 hours ago, Stubby47 said:

How are the wires kept in the ferrules?

 

They're crimped on using a crimping tool. This is not a cheap way of doing things if you're only going to be doing a few terminations, but these tools have been used extensively over the last 5 years and are therefore relativelt cost-effective. In fact, the wire strippers are the second pair I've had - the first pair wore out.

 

 

 

 

[Oldddudders]

Interesting. I have had difficulty with inserting wires into choc-blocks - it looks as though it's in, but tightening the screw does nothing except increase the world supply of Anglo-Saxon. These might work for larger chocs. 

[Mick Bonwick]

23 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Interesting. I have had difficulty with inserting wires into choc-blocks - it looks as though it's in, but tightening the screw does nothing except increase the world supply of Anglo-Saxon. These might work for larger chocs. 

 

I use them for everything that involves screwed connections. They're the best thing for choc-blocks since Dairy's cadbury milk. Another option, though, is to strip the wire, twist the strands together, double them over and tin the end with solder.

[nickwood]

50 minutes ago, Mick Bonwick said:

 

 Another option, though, is to strip the wire, twist the strands together, double them over and tin the end with solder.

 

That's what I would do.

[john new]

1 hour ago, Oldddudders said:

Interesting. I have had difficulty with inserting wires into choc-blocks - it looks as though it's in, but tightening the screw does nothing except increase the world supply of Anglo-Saxon. These might work for larger chocs. 

 

My trick when that happens is solder a bit of copper wire to the end of the leads and screw down onto that. The copper wire costs me nothing, I cut it from some off cuts of heavy duty mains wiring gleaned from skips over the years. I have two types with different weights to the wire strands and it comes in handy for a wide range of fixes completely unrelated to the original purpose of transmitting 250v mains power. 

 

Edited June 18, 2020 by john new
Typos corrected