young37215

Fantastic work and a comprehensive report on what is being done. Given the propensity for water to to collect internally and create corosion, is there anyway that additional drainage can be introduced at the various 'hot spots'?

Thanks, it is a constant challenge to find angles that produce interesting pictures. That area of Crianlarich is probably my favourite one for pictures and I have to resist showing it too often. However for once a little self indulgence.

No activity yesterday which was a volunteering day. From the previous running day, 37043 rattles into Crianlarich with 1T16, 0740 Oban to Glasgow.

Fort William station is 1900mm in length which allows a single locomotive and 6 coaches to fit in whilst retaining access to the other platform as well as the run round loop. This works with my version of the sleeper which runs as load 6 being the standard 4 coach rake with 2 sleeping cars. Attaching and detaching sleeping cars at Fort William is straightforward although the down sleeper does foul the points until the loco runs around and sets back. 37017 demonstrates this visually in the pictures below Arrival at Fort William Rear coach fouls the points that access the 2 platforms but not the run round loop 37017 pulls forward to run round the train Having run round 37017 sets back onto the train Once set back the whole 6 coach consist fits neatly in the platform After 37017 has departed for Mallaig, 20184 retrieves the 2 sleeping cars which are taken away for cleaning

Spent a little time on preparations to complete the BUS wiring and point motorisation at Ardlui. This is the only station on WHL4 where wiring is incomplete at present with the fishplates used for power and the point blades for frogs as oppose to connecting each piece of track to the BUS individually and frog power switched by microswitches attached to the point servos. This is my usual approach when trialling new parts of the layout which was the case 2 years ago when I first laid the track. It has proved effective so its time to commit to wiring everything fully as a precursor to gluing the track down and painting it. 37017 gets the road and departs Crianlarich heading north.

A new days operations begins with 37017 on the down sleeper arriving at Crianlarich in bright early morning light. As a vacum brake only loco until its refurbishment to a 37/5 in the mid 80's, 37017 was usually confined to passenger services whilst working on the WHL in the early 80's because most of the freight had gone air braked. No doubt 017's steam heat boiler would have been in use to keep the sleeper clientele toasty in their beds.

As long as you have different colour wires for positive and negative, changing the order of coaches in their rakes around should be straightforward even for the colour blind. My thinking is that I have largely fixed rake formations where I change the order of the coaches around and swap them between rakes once or twice a year just for the sake of changing them. No need for turning the coaches around, just a simple alteration to the running order. With your flexible connectors system my approach becomes viable, before it looked like it required a large amount of manual work dis-connecting and re-connecting wires.

Finding different vantage points for pictures is a challenge, so many are repeats of differening locos and consists at similar points around the layout. I am tempted by a selfie stick to see if this lets me get to areas previously inaccessible. More video is also high up my to do list, I particularly fancy a 'loco cam' to do some cab ride videoing. 37043 draws to a halt at Garelochead.

What a neat idea, if you can resolve the soldering issue the magnets are a really elegant solution. I can see the concept being transferrable to coaching stock in addition to locos and units. I would like to put coach lighting in my rolling stock and have always pondered how I could avoid having to put pickups in every coach. In my mind I had thought about running wires between coaches but this kept stalling over how rakes could be rearranged without major surgery to the wiring. I think your design is the solution. Please keep us posted on how your efforts develop.

When I started building WHL4 I learnt for the first time that installing point motors and wires on a workbench was a far more civilised way of working. The lower level has all been built this way but I then compromised myself by screwing the baseboards down and putting scenery on top which effectively secures them in place for all but the most extreme of situations. My 'learning experience' has been it is a right beast having to do any remedial work or any sort of upgrade from underneath any baseboard and I would have been better served with removable baseboards. At least I worked this out before building the upper level stations at Fort William and Mallaig and these are removable with care should further work be necessary. 37043 approaches Garelochead with the last northbound train of the day 1B15, 1755 Glasgow to Oban.

I managed to add the remaining BUS wires to roads 1 - 4 in the fiddle yard which completes the BUS re-wiring. Hooray, hot soldering irons and working on the underside of baseboards are not a source of enjoyment. Running trains is, 37081 departs Crianlarich and heads north with 1B14.

Ditto Andy's comments on the pictures, I aspire to a model of 1999 but it is a long way off of my capabilities to scratch build a presentable version. I dont think that there is anything that gets close to it in 00 unless someone knows better? As for loco diagrams I would treat Nick Meskell's as being advisory rather than mandatory. The loco off of the 0700 ex Mallaig would have time for fuelling at Eastfield in between the 2 'booked' trains although in my practical experience the loco would just as likely be swapped as it would stick to diagram. Based upon my own observations, diagrammed operation on the WHL was pretty flexible in practice!

I use this thread as a diary to record the development and evolution of WHL4. In recent months it has additionally helped me deal with the challenges of the lockdown by providing a means to communicate with the outside world. Todays post records a summary of the electrical work I have done in recent days in the fiddle yard which I sincerely hope provides a solution to the power issues I have faced. In this respect I am really disappointed by ESU's failure or reluctance to answer my question about Cab Control's short circuit protection triggers settings. It has been suggested to me that ESU are unlikely to answer me because I am UK based with Cab Control not being marketed in Europe. I dont know if this is correct but whatever the reasons ESU's lack of response to a customer is poor. Picture 1 is a diagram of the various constituent parts of the revised power BUS's and picture 2 shows diagramatically the location of the sub power districts. Picture 3 shows the fiddle yard at the start of the day when it is at its fullest; as can be seen there is not much spare capacity. The one outstanding task is the installation of the DPST switches which should be simple enough, I want to try the revised arrangements before installing these in the faint hope that better wiring may solve my start up challenges.

I dont have enough PSX's for the 4 power districts I now have and only had (past tense!) 1 Soft Start module hence it was the first device wired along the BUS and therefore before any of the PSX's. On the basis that Cab Control has its own short circuit protection, I was not too concerned about the location of the Soft Start although clearly this was a flawed hypothesis. My rationale for trying the PSX's was not primarily as circuit breakers but to slow the current inrush on start up. Unfortunately the PSX's dont do this and given I consider additional short circuit protection beyond that in Cab Control a duplication and unnecessary expense, they are not likely to remain on the layout. Yesterday I managed to complete the wiring of what is effectively a new power BUS to facilitate the creation of sub power districts within the fiddle yard. This has proved time consuming largely because the original wiring was confined to just a few droppers connected to the original power BUS sufficient to enable the fiddle yard to operate. Partly this was down to my laziness and partly because when I built the fiddle yard I wanted to test that it worked operationally before fixing everything in place. After 4 years of testing I now feel confident that the yard delivers what I need to run the timetable and essentially I am re-wiring the entire 13 road fiddle yard. Droppers on roads 1 - 4 are outstanding, otherwise the re-wiring is complete and I can get back to running. I managed to run a few trains, partly to alleviate the monotony of wiring and partly to test that it all worked. 37081 had charge of 1B14, 1636 Glasgow to Mallaig seen aariving at Crianlarich

A day of contrasting fortunes started badly. Cab Control applied track power at the first time of asking but there were no signs of life with the locos. I looked under the layout where the circuit breaker’s are located and was greeted by smoke coming out of the Tam Valley soft start unit. I quickly turned power off at the socket but not before the soft start unit had begun to melt. It turns out I had created a short when swapping a piece of track around. I opened windows to clear the acrid smoke although the unpleasant burning smell hung around all day. I swapped wires around to correct the short and fitted several sets of insulating fishplates to divide the fiddle yard into 3 distinct electrical districts. I then added additional BUS wire to feed the new droppers. Finally I managed to fit 6 of the 13 roads with droppers and by the end of the day I had roads 8 to 13 back working. The soft start unit looks healthy enough That is until you turn it over! £20 literally gone up in smoke An aerial view of the fiddle yard with work in progress. Operationally this has 3 distinct and self contained sections, from right to left these are roads 1 - 4, 5 - 8 and 9 - 13. Each of the sections has run round capability at both ends to reduce shunting which I find minimises derailments. These will become 3 independent power districts by the time I add and connect the remaining 7 sets of droppers. All in all it’s a lot of effort for no obvious visible return. I hope that the work will pay a dividend of better electrical performance.

Quick start again yesterday with track power, it can't last. Spent some time dividing up the power BUS in the fiddle yard as the first steps towards creating two switchable power districts with a third non switched. On start up the unswitched district will be powered up first with districts 2 and 3 switched in sequence with a few seconds delay to allow capacitors to charge. Hopefully this will resolve the start up issue. When I built the fiddle yard my focus was on the track layout, not the electrics which are pretty lightweight and so I am now choosing to install additional doppers so that each of the 13 roads that it comprises are powered. At present the two power districts will be roads 1 to 4 and roads 5 to 13 although this could be further divided in need but I hope it will not be necessary. The imbalance reflects that I want less than 10 locos in each district and typically there are more locos on roads 1 - 4 because it includes sidings used for stabling. I have 20 plus old Peco point motors which I intend installing in the fiddle yard on the most used points. The motors will be fitted underneath the baseboard and I intend drilling out holes for them during the BUS work. I am not sure that I have the inclination to lift the baseboards to fit the motors at this time, I will see how I feel after the BUS work. Having changed crews, the Oban freights depart Crianlarich.

Yesterday Cab Control started twice on the first button push. As ever I have no idea why, presumably today will be a slow day requiring numerous attempts to connect track power . 37049 gets the road and departs Garelochead with 1T45 heading for Glasgow.

More frustration with my continuing start up power problem yesterday when DCC Specialities provided me with an explanation of how ADR works on their PSX circuit breaker module. The helpful and constructive counsel made it clear that the PSX is unlikely to solve my start up issue so it is back to the drawing board and more re-wiring to create further sub-districts. ESU's silence to my request for what appears important routine information about their product continues and I am beginning to question the wisdom of deploying their system. ESU's poor customer service is contrary to their stated position of providing a comprehensive service or there is something that they are hiding?. Once I managed to get up and running I continued my 1981 timetabled operations. 37049 arrives at Garelochead with 1T45, 1245 Mallaig to Glasgow.

Cannot disagree with the sentiment but everything here points to an accurate understanding and quantification of the problem by more than 1 person. The only real missing bit is the outstanding information from ESU about the short circuit trip programming thresholds. Without knowing the thresholds it is trial and error to see what stops the spurious start up trips occuring, with the information it might be easier to produce a definitve solution. Today was a classic case in point with the intermittency and extent of the issue. It took me 20/30 attempts to connect track power this morning when previously this week I have been connecting on first or second attempt. I know locos were in different positions on the layout but their numbers had not changed. I have no idea why it is so hit and miss, I could understand the problem being the same each day but the wide variation in how it prsesents itself is beyond my comprehension. I heard from DCC Specialities main man Larry Maier on Tuesday although I only discovered his reply in my Spam folder today. Larry sent a very clear explanation of what ADR is which made it obvious that it could not solve my problem. ADR is essentially a slowing down of the speed of trip that the PSX uses as its threshold to determine shorts so that the momentary surge from capacitors charging does not cause unnecessary trips on the PSX. I have my PSX on the shortest time settings so as to maximise the PSX's short circuit protection and there is no obvious value to reducing the PSX trip time because it is my booster that is tripping, not the PSX. It looks like further sub division of my power districts is the next step along this journey of discovery.

There was quite a bit of work done to reduce the impact of the regular flooding in the area culminating in the 1968 big flood. I dont know specifically but it seems reasonable to assume that the river would have been a focal point and the change has straightened out the river.

I really want to kick on with some more scenic work but am enjoying 'playing trains' too much. I have beeen threatening to do more with Mallaig since the start of the year where the station needs more detailing and the rocky areas on the station throat are a long way from finished. With the benefit of operational experience I want to add 50mm to the baseboard at the coastal end of the station to extend the main platform by a similar amount which will enable trains to sit deeper in the station to enhance the feel of the section. 37033 had charge of the teatime train, 2B12 1630 from Fort William seen arriving at Mallaig before returning with the last train of the day back to Fort William.

37051 approaches Crianlarich from the Oban line with 8V80, 1605 ex Oban to Sighthill where it passes 37264. Crews change over here hence the stopping in the middle of the platform to minimise the walking required.

The Tam Valley start module has arrived, been fitted and does nothing to resolve my problem! Option 1 of the list of potential solutions has not delivered a resolution to the problem. At the time of writing neither DCC Specialities or ESU have responded to my requests for information about their products. I had hoped that such basic and straightforward information was readily available but it seems I am wrong. Poor customer service in my opinion. In recent days the start up issue has been less pronounced and I have a useable layout. On some occassions I start track power with the first button push, on others it can take several presses. As it stands today the situation is manageable, the long delays have fallen away which I can only attribute to the PSX's. If this continues then what I have is workable as it stands although I have additional DPST switches and am considering further dividing the fiddle yard into 2 sub districts. It will be a pain to re-wire the fiddle yard in situ so I plan to make the changes when I install point motors which will require the baseboards lifting on to the workbench. I do appreciate the counsel and guidance that has been given; thank you again for your time and efforts. As ever if I find anything more or get a reply from either vendor I will update the thread.

I have a 1975 public timetable which shows just the overnight sleeper as a through train from Edinburgh. The sleeper started at Kings Cross meaning that it would have to transit Edinburgh on its journey which makes the stop easy to understand. I am less familiar with mid 70's operations but the basics of any through train having to reverse at Glasgow Queen Street would not be any different. Back to business yesterday with trains running. Application of track power was quick, first push of the start button in the morning and second push in the afternoon. The Tam Valley soft start arrived late in the day which I aim to install today. I am still waiting responses from ESU regarding the short circuit trip settings on the Cab Control and DCC Specialities with an explanation of what adaptive load reset is and how it works. 37264 arrives at Crianlarich with 8B05, 1449 Sighthill to Oban which will cross the opposite working from Oban here. Note the wonky chimney on the station building in the last picture. The chimney is not glued down hence it is prone to getting moved by careless hands!

yep, it’s a beautiful day and too nice to be indoors. A day or two off and some fresh air will do me good.