peach james

The're alive! Ran 50035 around with the cleaning train last night. Have it set to go more today. I've been mucking about with the new revision of the program for running trains, substantial revisions were required to correct for track changes, and the last version (LMSB 13.0) of internal revisions had kind of reached an impass, it provides lots of info going forward though. I've got the double and single slips set up, took apart one of the signals due to failure to operate correctly, will modify accordingly and get to work before reinstalling. Ug. I'd also like to try and get the last 3 turnouts motorized. I have the Torti to do it, but I can't find the linkage. I thought I had one more bag of Tamya kicking around...I can't seem to find it. 9 days until the BRMoV are here. No problem James

Got the DCC powered up, with the DS64's in the signal box powered too, including changing the address series and CV's. A little tidbit is that CV15 which is undocumented in the Digitrax information with DS 64's is the toggle for operate turnouts I will see if I can get trains going tonight...we will see. It's 1800 here or so... James

It's Tuesday PM here, and what has happened? We (Daniel, my 4.5 year old son) and I went to Naniamo to the show there on Sunday. Between 3 adults, a 9 year old and my -1 helper, we managed to display ~62 sq ft of lego train goodness. I would have liked to have had more set up, but I am limited in that everything that I do right now means moving something in a complicated pattern to get to the next item, because my basement is empty and my shipping containers are full. The good news is that the cement guy has been pestering my contractor, and wants to put the slab in soon. Then, some of the 3 way circular argument will end, because I will be able to move stuff into the new unfinished basement to get it out of the containers, and the basement will only have to house the stuff from upstairs... On the layout front, Long Marton got around 4 hours work done tonight, with 2 replacement boards made up for holding the DB150 boosters, a relay, and a 120:12V power supply. As well, Daniel and I spend a good portion of the day on the road, getting the relays, wire and a new soldering iron. When I was working on DCCing Clan Macleod, my trusty Antax 18W/12V job quit on me. I metered it, infinite resistance. Since Antax soldering irons are like rocking horse dung over here, I got a weller 25W/120V job for now, and are likely going to get a temp controlled station in the near future. New Purchases: 72008 Clan Macleod (Hornby). Fitted with NCE decoder in tender, via the expedient of flipping the circuit board over and soldering the leads of the decoder to the circuit board. I'm too cheap to have 8 pin decoders to hand... Work complete: Boosters ready for testing. New extension cord made to power all 3 boosters from one outlet. Includes handy light to let me know that I've the inteligence of (insert political figure name here...) and left the power on to the DCC again. James

So, rather than the blog style, I will continue here with the odd posts about what has been happening with Long Marton. At present, I have had trains running, but have had problems with the DS 54's under the signalbox resetting themselves to some unknown address for operating turnouts. They transmitted the inputs fine, but the outputs were not working at all. I have bought a PR3, so finally have a way of reading back addresses. I messed around, found that CV 513 (!) holds the address on a DS 54, and got one working. Since then, there has been a slight game delay for 3 reasons. 1. Allen Johnathan Powell was born on the 25th March. 2. Work continues on addition to house. (~830 sq ft, between 2 floors. Includes 17x24' room for me. (have to share it for a few years though...). Since I am general contractor, I have to be here for the work...and have to schedule a moderate amount of it. 3. Going to Nanaimo train show this weekend. So, I have been madly scrambling to get lego trains out, figure out a workable layout and do some programming as well as building. It doesn't help when the first step is "modify benchwork"... It looks like a 13x10' L shaped layout, with a single track along the back of the 13' section, elevated by ~6" or so on brick built platforms. Then, there will be a Inglenook Siding, and a continous circuit on the lower level. Intent is a fairly low track:structures ratio, with only 2.5 of us going to be there to display. Next step is to finish undoing stuff (tables) & get the inglenook to work under DCC, then transport packing the whole lot. Naniamo is ~120 km from here, and older son and I will be leaving at 0:dark 30 to get there by 8 am on Sunday. Back to Long Marton, the intent is to restart work O/C sunday, with a reprogram of the other 2 DS 54's being the only outstanding thing to do. Then, I need to get ver 20.0 (major rev) of the RR&Co program done up, and get reasonable performance out of the layout for the 25th, which is the BRMVI visit, semi- annual... I am back to about the same configuration as the last time, but this time the second wye is installed, and the full 15 track yard is not in place because of the house construction. That, and more signals work, along with some of the turnouts in Long Marton under the computer. There is so much to do, and I find so little time to manage it, even though I am off work on parental leave until December 16th of this year. I have taken to modifying the outputs from the DB150's on Long Marton, they will be fitted with a heavy duty relay to allow for closing the DCC:track signal after allowing time for the outputs to stablize. I'm a little concerned that part of the problems I have seen have been from the output issues that are known about with DCC. (high track voltages, ect). This means more DC control wiring, as well as rewiring some AC stuff to supply all 3 booster districts from the same switch. I'm also getting a loconet repeater, to allow for the splitting of the loconet into 2 segments, the boosters & computer being on one, and the rest of everything else on the other one. James Powell

Kit may orignally be Imputus, my friend has what was mine...as I have a P4 100 HP industrial (post war) one...about 2/3rds built. After 12 years. (hmm, should get on with it, I guess...) James Powell Son of 7529's original preservation owner...

It's Hafalax, really. (at least, our's is...that's the one in Nova Scotia) Captain, to those of us who chose a warmer climate, we disagree with being sent there in the winter. I can't help it that they keep getting bad storms every time I leave... (was there for Juan, then White Juan...I've spent ~5 months there in total...) (PO) James Powell, RCN. (If the ship says it, I can too...)