The Joys of Wiring

Haupt negotiating  the dip

 We finished wiring the layout today with frog juicers, feeders and the auto-reverse on the turntable. 

Amby spent the afternoon installing 4 frog juicers. The task was a little more complicated than usual since the rails on the frogs on my hand-laid turnouts are not all electrically connected. The easiest way to connect them is to solder a jumper across all the rails and then use the extension of that wire as the feeder wire  to the frog.  See the yellow circle the photo to see the jumper under the frog rails.  That jumper is part of the wire to the frog juicer. 

The red circle show how I use pieces of dark gray styrene to seal the gaps in the rails so that the will not close and cause shorts or other electrical problems.

While Amby was working on the frogs, I put a base layer of scenery on the Stares Tunnel section.

After dinner, I finished wiring the last frog juicer. Then I filled all the gaps with styrene and filed them smooth to the rail.  I also added jumpers from the all the stock rails to the closure rails.

The last under table wiring task was to connect the auto reverse circuit on the turntable. That worked as soon as I hooked it up. That was a pleasant surprise.

Amby and I did some test running. If you want to find track problems, run one of the Masons. Sure enough Haupt was derailing when backing over the south abutment. After a lot of gauge checking and test running I determined that rear rail by the abutment had a dip. I was able to fix it by levering the rail up a few thousands with a  small screwdriver. It now works without problems. 

I ran Haupt and Osceola up and down the tracks to test  the track, gaps and feeders. and all seemed to be working pretty well.  The wiring is done, but I still need to paint and ballast the track. I also need to do some tidying up of the wires under the layout so that they do not interfere with removing the books.

Base coat of scenery on Stares Tunnel

Doing scenery and backdrops and all the other work is fun, but when the trains move across the layout it really comes to life.

          

Resistance was not futile

Ohm my word, it finally happened. I finished wiring the tracks to the Aquia Line. There were a few glitches along the way,  such as I forgot to gap the turnout on the wharf, that caused a few head scratching moments. But after cutting those gaps, all was back to normal. Also, some of the guard rails of my frogs were not electrically connected to the neighboring rails, causing a few unexpected stalls. I fixed those by soldering jumpers. People that solder their frogs and guard rails don't have this problem.

I installed a Tony Trains Exchange On-Guard auto reverser circuit on one leg of the wye and added 9 Tam Valley Frog juicers to the turnouts. Both items are straight forward to install and worked great.

Engine Haupt,  equipped with a Tsunami sound decoder, chugs across the manual turnout from the Bakery siding

The turnout to the siding for the bakery could not use a frog juicer. This was because a locomotive entering that frog will also trigger the frog juicer on the frog of the adjacent crossover. Frog juicers do not work well when two are tripped by a loco at the same time.  To solve that problem, I added a manually operated SPDT toggle switch to handle the polarity on that frog to the fascia near that turnout. I added a switch plate on the fascia to help operators to remember to flip it when they also move the points.  Fortunately, that turnout is only switched when accessing the siding, so it normally will be set for "main line." This is the only non-automatic polarity switching frog on the layout. Hopefully it won't cause too many operational errors.  A better solution would be to add an under table mechanism, but that would require a new design as my current switch stands and point bridles are scale size and not easy to modify.

Some lessons learned from this wiring exercise.

1. Turn off layout power when wiring
2. Follow a color code to keep track of polarity - I used "red to rear."
3. Test for shorts after each connection
4. Wiring with bi-focals under the layout is tough. Bring a work light with you to better see under the bench work. My desk chair could be adjusted to allow sitting under the layout in some spots which helped make things more comfortable.
5. Testing DCC circuits with an Ohm meter can be tricky. Engines, especially battery powered,  left on the tracks will measure as high resistance shorts. Best to remove all engines when debugging.

With all the wiring done, it is time to do some testing, and that is on going.  The wye works well. I have a few rough spots in the track-work that tuning and adjusting should help alleviate.

I am thinking about modifying my links to prevent them from jamming when cars are backing. As long as the cars push coupler face to couple face they work well. But sometimes, the links jam in the pockets and don't allow the faces to touch. That can cause the cars to lift off the rails. I plan to make narrower links without the middle bar. Hopefully, that stops the derails that sometimes happen when backing up.

Some thoughts on battery operation in model railroads

I recently did a quick look article for MRH on the Stanton Battery system. The article was essentially a compilation of various of my notes from this blog. Long time readers of the blog will have seen most of it already. In this post I thought it would be useful to address some points not in the article, and answer several questions I got from people via email and forum posts. I realize that DCC is like a religion. These are my observations and I am not trying to convert you. 

I did not spend much time in the article spelling out some of the advantages of battery power. In case you are not aware, here are some things I find very handy.

1. Track need not be scrupulously clean. Since I charge my batteries through the rails, I need some degree of electrical contact, but not the "clean room" standards that normal DCC requires.

2. Shorts on the track power rails do not stop battery powered locos. During op sessions, when one causes a short, by splitting a turnout or derailing, all locos in that power district go dead.  So one has to divide up the layout into several power districts with separate boosters, or use power shields, or some other expensive solution to break the layout into power segments. Not so with battery power. They chug right through most shorts. No power districts needed. That is a real nice benefit that is frequently overlooked.

3. You don't have to wire your track at all if you don't want. My portable layout has no feeder wires to any of the rails except in the staging cassettes.  That is right ....no wires, no frog juicers,  no broken feeders. You do need to implement a recharging scheme but track power is not required.

4. With battery power, intermittent interruptions in track power do not cause the on-board loco sound to recycle.

5. Did I mention you don’t have to clean track.

Folks with large fleets of locos that are currently DCC may not want to convert all their engines to battery power. But, you could very easily add battery powered locos to an existing DCC wired layout. The two systems work well together.

That is what I did. Two of my locos have conventional DCC. The other 3 (with a 4th coming on board soon) will have battery power. Ted Pamperin added battery power to some of his problematic steamers to improve their performance on a HO scale DCC powered layout.

I had previously wired the first sections of my layout for DCC. I still need to finish about 30 percent of my track. The question I face is whether to wire the remaining section for DCC or not, If I don't add the DCC wiring, then I will have to convert the last two locos from DCC  to battery. However, I have already run the main bus wires into that section. I also have a frog juicer 6 pack unused. The frog juicers make DCC wiring pretty easy. So my current thinking is to wire the rest of the layout for DCC and use it as a power recharge source and DCC control for my first two non battery locos. If I was starting from scratch, I would not bother with wiring.

Yes, one can assign any Stanton equipped loco to any Stanton cab.

There are some other battery systems out there  (see Del Tang,  CVP Airwire,  TamValley). Some are smaller and will work in HO scale locos. Note that my O scale steamers are not much bigger than HO modern diesels.

It is also important to realize that installing a battery DCC system in my small steamers is actually easier than regular DCC. Why? When I do a DCC install, I have to completely disassemble the locos to add insulators and pick-ups on all the wheels. If I do not, then the loco performance is erratic and I have issues with dirty track, stalls, sound break-up, etc. With battery installs extra pickups are not needed. In fact, I got rid of the pickups on the pilot trucks on my first two installs as they aren't needed.

The challenge I had with the first 2 locos has been room in the engines and tenders for the battery and battery power supply. The latest generation of SMRs brass locos has more room in the tenders, so installing will be much easier.

The issue with the plugs between tenders and engines in not unique to battery power. The DCC locos have it too. I plan to hard-wire the rest and have a permanent drawbar between the tender and engine. My experience with moving these engines around is that the less handling the better.  So the plugs will be moot.

Using the Airwire T5000 I am able to program the Stanton Radio Tsunami DCC decoders to fine tune the performance. 

Notice I did not mention cost. I don't know if battery power is cheaper than DCC. I have both systems, so cost is a moot point. What I want is outstanding performance and simplicity. Battery power gives me that. 

With the current state of the art, I would say that battery power is not yet for everyone. Like the adoption of DCC, battery power will really take off when manufacturers start adding it to the new locos.

The Stanton System is intentionally designed for layouts with just a few engines. The Del Tang system is incredible small and may find lots of applications. But any layout where electrical pick-up is an issue (just about all of the 200 plus layouts I have operated on including some of the biggest and most famous) could benefit from freedom of picking up current from the rails.  For layouts like mine, where I am dealing with small, highly detailed, but finicky locos, battery power is imperative.

Radio controlled battery power has other applications on model railroads. Radio controled road vehicles are possibilities, especially with the tiny Del Tang system.  

Battery Power at Last

After  mildly disappointing DCC performance during the open house, I decided to move installing battery power to my locos up on the priority list. The DCC problems we experienced related to sporadic electrical pick-up, and difficulty with new throttle initialization. Throw in having to set dip switchs, dense 150 page instruction manuals from both the DCC and decoder manufacturer, and hexadecimal configuration variable programming and I had had it with the DCC. You can tell the DCC standard was designed by a committee, not just any committee, but a committee of engineers. We (the model RR community) need an "Apple Computer" type manufacturer to step up and streamline the whole user process. Stanton S-Scab is about as close as I have found so far. And remember, you can have it cheap, fast or good, pick two.

I had all the parts on hand from my earlier purchase of a S-Cab system from NWSL. See here.  As I laid out the components next to the engine I realized that it all was not going to fit in or on  the tender. But I was concerned that putting the decoder/radio receiver in the boiler would hurt the radio reception. I got some advice from the S-Cab yahoo group that encouraged me to proceed.


I took it slow and made sure everything was correct as I went along. First I removed the QSI decoder already in the engine.  I installed the decoder in the boiler, with a speaker in the firebox. The battery and charging circuit are on top of the motor in the tender. I used a yellow LED for the head light. It is not as bright as an incandescent lamp, but may look closer in color to the actual prototype oil lamps that they used in 1860.

I was successful, and now the engine is running great with battery power. Huzzah! Radio reception has not been a problem. The engine runs very smoothly with the steady supply of power. This has been exactly what i expected from battery power. Yes, I am chuffed!

This engine had a habit of shorting at the pilot truck on some of my tighter curves. Since it is a tender drive, I decided to not use any of the pickups in the engine and to only rely on the all wheel pickup in the tender. I had previously added pick ups to all wheels in the tender, so the engine can run tender only if I want. Thanks to the battery I don't need to have all those picks in the engine in service. That simplified the wiring task a bit.

It also sounds pretty good too. Putting the speaker in the firebox helps magnify the sound.

I still need to learn how to program with the S-Cab. but it looks like I will be ordering two more systems. I will keep the DCC system for now, but once I convert to all battery power, it really won't be necessary. Same for frog juicers and powered frogs, reverse loops etc.

The future is here!

Update on the Stanton Cab

While I am doing scenery work on my layout, I'd thought I post an update on the Stanton Battery Cab.


If you have been following this blog, you know that when I first learned of the Stanton Radio cab, I immediately saw the advantages for my layout and ordered one with a battery pack. The throttle and decoder unit arrived, but the batteries are on back order so I have not yet installed it.


The Stanton Cab was designed by an Australian engineer Neil Stanton, who is associated with Purdue University. He is also a model railroader. Paul Gillette of MRH podcast interviewed him and it is well worth listening too if you are interested. Here is the link to the podcast. He also makes a powered truck, which diesel modelers will be very interested in. But back to the cab.


Northwest Shortline is marketing the system for him. They have a small network of installers and dealers that are handling various aspects of the production. The cottage nature of the company combined with the poorly organized website that NWSL has and you end up with a product that very few people know about.


I have not operated my unit yet but I can describe it.

The cab is the radio transmitter. It acts as the base station. You need one cab to run one train. For each train you want to run you need to get a hand held cab. There is no base station or booster.

Inside the loco you install their decoder package. It consists of the Stanton radio receiver and a standard dcc decoder. NWSL packages them in one hardwired unit. I have one with a Tsunami TSU-1000 sound decoder. They also offer a NCE decoder option.


You can run it off power from the rails, or install a battery. I already have a Easy DCC system, so I am not interested in the using the Stanton system off rail power method. I want it for the battery power option. But as I mentioned, I don't have the battery yet.

The Stanton battery system can take a trickle charge off the rails. I plan to add the radio-battery units one by one to my railroad keeping the easy dcc system for the other locos that have just dcc and rail  power.


If the Stanton system works out, I plan to retrofit all my locos. That is not that big a job as my layout has 5 locos right now with one more on order and one being scratch built.


As far as my critical path planning goes, I still have about one third of my track to lay and 9 turnouts to install. If I were to continue to use DCC I need to order frog juicers and a reversing circuit for my wye. But, if I convert my fleet to battery power, then I don't have to bother wiring the new section. That is a highly desirable option, as I dislike wiring. Though I must admit the frog juicers take most of the hassle out of wiring.


The transition then will be tricky for me as my regular dcc units will not work well in the new section if I dont add the frog juicers.


If all goes well and all my locos are converted to battery power, I can pull my DCC system and keep it for my N scale or other projects. The batteries can recharge off any inexpensive power charger hooked to the rails.


I am sure that most of the progressive DCC manufacturers are working on battery power and in 5 years it will be the dominant mode. HO modelers will especially be interested in the power truck as it frees up the interior of the diesels for batteries. Then the weight in your loco will provide power as well as pulling effort.


This is next revolution in indoor model railroading. The outdoor guys have been doing it for a long time now. With small battery packs becoming available we can join in.

The future of model railroad is .....

....here now.

Over the past few years as I have been working and test operating my layout, dealing with shorts,  dealing with dirty track, and having to engineer reverse loops and frog power, I thought, "when are we going to drop this archaic system and go to battery power?"

Well, the answer is now.

This weekend, in a discussion with Ted Pamperin, he alerted me to the availability of the Stanton Radio Cab DCC system with battery pack. I had looked at it a few months ago, but because the NWSL's web site, the company that is offering the system, was so hard to use with broken and circular links, I could not tell if it was for sale.  Now, I confirmed that it is for sale. Today I ordered a starter bundle with a lithium-polymer (li-po) battery system.


I plan to overlay this on my Easy DCC system and use the 15V from the DCC system as a trickle charge. If the radio-battery system works as advertised, I'll convert the whole fleet to radio-battery control. At that point, my Easy DCC system would be come a bit overkill, as all I would need is a 15V DC source on the rails. But I can keep it for use on my N Scale DCC equipment.

If you need convincing about this system, check out this video.


I think that this type of system, as it comes down in price and becomes ready installed will lead to a new revolution in model railroading. If I was a DCC manufacturer, I'd be looking into this.

I also received my Christmas present today, the Model Railroader 75-Year Collection DVD. This is another move toward the future. But in this case, it looks like the future must wait. My disks were damaged during shipping and they won't install. I called Kalmbach customer service and they are sending replacements. They said they had a lot of trouble with disks 1 and 2 in the way they are packaged in the case.  I hope the replacements work.

In a triple play, I also received a review copy of The Iron Way, by William Thomas. I'll post a full review once I read it. Thanks to Ivan Lett at the Yale University Press for the copy.

Wiring Completed...

The wipers are clearly seen in this view.

 Well not totally, but it is completed in the main layout room.  With the additional of the auto-reverse control unit for the turntable, and laying and wiring the final tracks in the Falmouth engine terminal, all track and wiring is done in the main room. I still have to lay track and wire the Aquia Landing area, but the rest of the layout is operational.

The auto-reverse unit and its bracket.

The first two photos at left show the auto-reverse unit and the wiper mechanism I used to power the turntable. The auto-reverse unit is an On Guard auto-reverser unit from Tony's Train Exchange. I bought several years ago.  Unlike the Frog Juicers, this unit will reverse polarity for both rails. Like the Frog Juicer, this unit does not require a separate power supply. Just connect the DCC bus lines to one terminal and the track feeders to the other. It has provisions for a LED output, but I opted to not connect it as the unit is under the bench work and the whole idea is to make the operation transparent to the user.

The On Guard unit is now obsolete as it can't handle the current demands of numerous simultaneous sound decoders. For now it is working as I only have one non-sound decoder on the layout. We'll have to see if multiple sound decoders cause it to malfunction.  My layout even at its peak will be a light density operation with at most 5 locos running at the same time. According to information at Tony's Train Exchange web page, this unit should be OK under these conditions, but I won't know for sure until I actually test it.

If I run into problems I can add additional boosters. Having more than one booster is a good idea in general because it isolates the layout into electrical sections. These sections are not like the traditional electrical blocks where you have to manually control the throttle connected to each block. The booster sections are transparent to the operator. All they do is help limit current flow in each booster by spreading the load across multiple boosters. More importantly, they prevent a single short from taking down the whole layout. So for example, if an operator at Aquia Landing causes a short, an operator at Falmouth on a different booster would not be affected.

I have wired my layout into three separate power districts. So typically I will see a max of perhaps three locos operating in any one district.  But for now I am running the whole layout on a single booster.  I will need to purchase additional boosters at a later point.

The bracket is scrap wood, so please ignore the black
writing as it doesn't pertain to this application.

The third photo shows how the electrical wipers rub against the metal bands on the turntable shaft creating a home-made commutator. The design will allow the turntable to be removed for maintenance or scenery installation.  The wipers are twin sections of 0.032 inch phosphor bronze soldered to a brass plate.

The two white wires are frog feeders for the double slip switch at Falmouth. Those feeders must run the full length of the room to reach the Frog Juicer circuits.

I decided to add wipers to the tender of the Haupt to improve its pickup. It was running pretty well without them, but I want to see how much of a difference all wheel pick-up on the tender would make.

First I installed an insulating tab on the bolster beam of the tender trucks. The tender trucks are hot, so without insulation the new pickups would short.

Then I fabricated electrical wipers. At first I tried using 0.010 inch flat brass stock. But these did not work well as the wheels have a fair amount of lateral play, and the brass did not have enough flexibility to maintain contact with the backs of the wheels. So I modified the tabs by cutting off the brass extensions, and soldering on 0.010 inch phosphor bronze wire wipers. I arranged these to wipe on the surface of the wheel. They are flexible enough to track the wheels as they move laterally. I applied a liberal amount of 5 minute epoxy to hold the tabs and wipers in place.

I had to drill two holes in the tender frame to run the wires from the new wipers to the motor lead. I cut the existing red wire to the decoder and soldered in the new feeders, covering the joint it with heat-shrink insulation. I actually did this before adding the wipers.

I tested the connections and they worked. The tender will now run without the engine attached.
With the engine attached it runs nearly flawlessly. It takes a fair amount of dirty track to stall it.

So with the engine reassembled. I did some test running. I ran a train from Aquia to Falmouth, reversed on the turntable and then back to Potomac Run to drop off a flat car of lumber. Everything worked, so I can declare the layout operational.

Overall view of the tracks at the engine terminal at Falmouth

It's too cool for shorts!

I wired up the last three turnouts at Brook using a second Hex Frog Juicer.  These were the last frogs that needed to be wired in the main room. So I decided to test them. I fired up the Haupt, the only engine I have right now that has a decoder. It has been a good runner. But in today's test, it would not run well at all. It was stalling and shorting in places where it ran well earlier. The shorts seemed to be coming from the front truck.  So started several hours of debugging, but in the end I think I found the problem.  I'll provide some more detail in case you run into similar problems on your locos.

The wheels on the engineer side of the Haupt are electrically connected to frame. The wheels on the fireman side are insulated at the hub. There are no wipers on the fireman side of the drivers. There is a single wiper on the pilot truck to pick up power from one axle. The whole frame is hot. If the pilot wheels or drivers on the fireman side touch the frame, there can be a short.

The pilot truck has an oblong curved slot in the top sheet between the truck frames (this is a part on the model only. The prototype doesn't have this piece as its front suspension is much more complicated). Through this slot goes a special stud type screw that attaches to the bottom of the boiler. The screw holds the pilot truck on the loco, but the truck hangs somewhat loosely. There is a cylindrical brass spacer and a spring to provide a bit of suspension. The first problem I noted was that this spring was partially stuck in the oblong slot and not fully engaged. I made washers out of 0.022 inch resin impregnated paper to give the spring a place to rest and to prevent it from getting stuck in the slot. I also added three washers at the top of the spring to help the front of the loco to ride a bit higher providing clearance for the wheels. This also seemed to help the tracking of the truck but it did not solve the shorts.

I tried running the loco, but still was getting shorts. I removed the front truck and the loco ran without problems. 

I put the front truck back on, turned the room lights out and tried running. I got shorts and could see sparks. I removed the loco and carefully inspected it. I found scorch marks in two locations, both on the fireman's side. One was on the front of the fireman's side cylinder where the wheel sometimes rubs on curves. The other location was on the bottom of the cross head guides.  See the photos.  

It appears that as I ran the loco the paint in these locations wore off. Where the fireman wheels touched the bare frame, shorts  happened and created arcs.   The crosshead needs to be lubricated as friction here will prevent the drivers from turning as it moves down the track. 

Using the laser I cut a paper insulating ring  for the front of the cylinder. It's the white ring in the photo. I added insulating strips on the crosshead guides (see the first loco photo). I also painted the back plate of the crosshead in case that touched the wheels. I only had to do these fixes to the fireman side as the engineers side is all hot and rubbing doesn't cause a short.

I also removed the wiper on the pilot truck because it started smoking during one of the shorts. The wiper is held in place with an insulated plastic sleeve that prevents the screw from touching the metal (and hot) frame of the pilot truck. I think that this sleeve was compromised when I removed the wiper.  It doesn't seem to hurt the loco's running.

After I reassembled the loco, the head light doesn't work. I didn't try fixing that, as I will need to rewire it for DCC when I get a sound decoder for the loco.  I'm not sure if the bulb is burnt out or the cut wiring to the pilot truck is the cause. It is actually fairly easy to replace the head light. The smoke box door pops off and the light bulb is a slight friction fit in the headlight housing.

I have not added the wipers on the tender for the engineer's side. The McCallum has wipers on both sides of the tender. Thus the tender will run by itself. The Haupt's tender will not run on its own as it relies on engineer side pickup from the engine.

All three of my Mason locos have had problems with the front truck. It seems like a better suspension might help with the tracking. Slightly smaller wheel flanges and insulating the cylinders may also help prevent the shorts. 

Finally, with the engine reassembled, I did some test running and it is working nicely now. The frog juicers work flawlessly. If only all model railroad wiring and track was so easy. Duncan McCree at Tam Valley Depot really has created a great product with these circuits.  On the other hand, the locos are beautiful, but temperamental little beasts. Kind of like a....... 

Falmouth Turntable in progress

I nearly finished all the wiring in the main room this weekend, but I need 3 Frog Juicers to wrap it up. I ordered two more Hex Frog Juicers (enough for 12 turnouts) so I can finish the wiring here and be ready for the yard at Aquia Landing.  Even with incomplete wiring, I ran the Engine Haupt with a short train to test track. Now that the double crossover in Falmouth is operating with auto reverse units on the frogs, I discovered that some fine tuning of the turnouts was needed.


      This turntable at Manassas served as inspiration for my
Falmouth turntable. Note the lightness of the rail, and the
crude level of  construction. It is hard to tell if there are stringer beams
under the ties and rails.  I assumed there were.


So with wiring on hold, I started construction of the Falmouth turntable.  The turntable is needed at Falmouth to turn locomotives so they can make the return trip nose first.
The turntable is loosely based on the prototype at  Manassass seen in the famous photo after Jackson's Raid in 1862.  Edwin Alexander made a set of plans based on the photo, but something about his plan didn't look right to me, so I modified the design to reflect how I think it may have been.

I used laser cut 3/16th inch basswood for the main structure and sugar pine ties from Mt Albert.  I added many Tichy NBWs to simulate the bolts holding the beans together. However, I did not simulate the laminations of the beams. I still need to add the truss rods, wheels and other details.

The pedestal separated from the shaft.
The pedestal will be glued to the pit floor. 

The shaft is a set of 1/2 inch and 7/16 inch Evergreen styrene tubes that telescope tightly together. I epoxied the tube to the center hole in the turntable bridge.

To make the conducting bands, I soldered 26 gauge wire leads to strips of 0.005 inch shim brass.  Then I drilled holes in the shaft, ran the leads into the holes. Next I wrapped the brass bands tightly around the 7/16ht inch shaft and quickly soldered them without melting the plastic.

Close up of the turntable shaft

With this design, the turntable shaft can slide into the pedestal. The pedestal will be glued to the pit floor.  If all goes to plan,  I'll be able to drop the turntable through the hole. Then add electrical wipers to the bands. I'll use a digital autoreverse unit to control the power to the rails.

This is a manual turntable, so I will not be using an indexing system. It's "armstrong" all the way.

It just occurred to me that this is the first turntable I have ever built either from scratch or kit. I had a Walthers N Scale turntable, but never installed it.

I am keeping my fingers crossed!

Overall view of the 12 inch turntable in its approximate location before I drill the shaft hole
and hog out the styrofoam.

Houston, we are DCC!

Thanks to some expert help from Paul Dolkos and Mitch Oldham, the USMRR Aquia line is  now running on DCC.  I was able to get most of the wiring done from Falmouth to Aquia Landing, but that is getting ahead of the story.

Paul installed the Easy DCC command station in a
temporary spot on the benchwork until I decide where
it should go permanently.

Paul is an owner of the Easy DCC system for his HO layout, so he was able to immediately open the boxes and begin connecting the components without any delay. Well, there was one delay. It seems I had forgotten to disconnect the DC power pack from the rails.  When Paul went to fire up the DCC system, the start-up sequence was not what he normally sees on his system. After a few perplexing moments wondering why the Easy DCC was not going through its normal start up procedure, I smelled smoke. Sure enough, the DC power pack was beginning to put out a serious amount of smoke. I disconnected the smoking power pack, and the Easy DCC system fired right up. Whew! I am glad the Easy DCC didn't fry.

Mitch at the workbench installed a decoder

In the meantime, Mitch was installing a decoder in the 4-4-0 Haupt, one of my SMR Masons in the work shop. Mitch used to run a DCC business and he came prepared with all manner of cool specialized DCC diagnostic tools. He methodically disassembled the Haupt and identified pickups, grounds etc. Then he went ahead and installed a Digitrax DH123D that I had previously purchased. This is a non-sound, economy decoder. I also had a Dallee Sound System sound chip, but we decided not to install it as it is pretty large and probably would not fit in the tender or boiler.

The Haupt crossing Potomac Creek under DCC.  Note
the bright headlight.

With the decoder installed the engine ran very well. However, I don't think this decoder features back-EMF as the engine speed varies as the loco moves across the tighter curves on the layout.

The loco's headlight light is always on when DCC power is on the track and is running quite bright. That must be addressed before it burns out by adding a resistor in line with the bulb. This will require running wires from the decoder to the headlight, but it looks easy thanks to the removable smoke box, a nice feature of the SMR Masons.

We learned a lot from Mitch's surgery on the Haupt. The removable smoke box and head light assembly will simplify many of the tasks needed to add sound and controllable headlight. We decided that on this loco the best place for the sound speaker will be in the smoke stack. Again this will require wires from the tender to the engine, but it shouldn't be too hard.  We also learned that the tender trucks have a split frame, so adding a second set of pickups on the tender axles will be relatively simple. (Note the McCallum already has these wires factory installed.) I will replace the DH123D with a Soundtraxx Tsumani decoder so that sound is integrated right in the DCC decoder. In fact I need to order five of them ASAP.

Mitch took the McCallum home with him to try to find why it is shorting on curves. He plans to get one too, so this will be win-win as he gets to study the loco before he buys it. He is making the switch from HO to O Scale ACW -  Huzzah!

The Tam Valley Hex Frog Juicer on the left lights up like a
Christmas tree.  The yellow wires run to the various frogs.
The outlet strip on the right has the bus lines to the
power districts. For now they are daisy chained into one district.

After Paul and Mitch headed home, I finished running bus lines, soldering feeders and installing the Hex Frog  Juicer. Tam Valley Depot makes the Hex Frog  Juicer and it is an absolute delight to install. No more fiddling with balky Tortoises or finicky mechanical linkages underneath the benchwork. This has to be the easiest way to power frogs. I have four frogs wired to it so far and it works as advertised. Thanks Duncan!


Terminal strip to allow smaller wires to be used on the HFJ sockets.

 Another half day of wiring and two thirds of the layout will be operational. Running with wireless throttles is really a pleasure that I had nearly forgotten.

I decided to rewire the HFJ to use smaller wires than the 18 gauge into the sockets. I added a terminal strip. This acts as an intermediate between the 18 gauge wires and 24 gauge wires. The holes on the HFJ sockets are very small. Thelast two FJs power the double crossover in Falmouth.

Making Progress on Wiring

I've have just about finished wiring the track from Aquia Landing to Falmouth.  The Stoneman's block is the only one not done. There is just one more turnout to finish gapping and a switch stand to install. Then run the bus wire for that block and solder on the already dropped feeders.

An astute observer might say, "Wait a minute, you showed us a video in April of trains running at Stoneman's?" 

Yes, but that was temporary wiring with alligator clips and spiked down turnouts. This is the real deal.
Of course, I still need to lay track in Aquia Landing. But, once this section is wired up, and I get a few more cars built,I could try a simple op session.

Here is a short video showing a test run from Aquia Landing to Stoneman's Station. Note that the train speed is probably a bit fast. The USMRR instituted a 5 MPH speed limit on the whole railroad. So when operating, the trains should move much slower.

More Temperamental Beastliness...

Just as I started the train moving and hit the iPhone video record button, the Whiton came to an abrupt halt. It wouldn't move forward or back. I tried to manually move it and it wouldn't budge. The loco was stuck. I was able to quickly discover that a tiny screw from one of the crank arms came loose and the crank arm dropped down and jammed against a tie. Of course this happened just as the train was leaving Aquia Landing in the hidden section. If the mountain was finished, it would have been much tougher to diagnose the problem.  Luckily I was able to extract the train by gently rocking it side to side. Then I spotted the tiny missing screw, not much bigger than a sesame seed, precariously perched on the edge of the roadbed. It put it back on and the engine ran fine. Note to self, make sure you tighten those screws every now and then. Maybe even get some extras. How about some Loctite?

Catering to the Temperamental Iron Beast

I finished wiring the sidings at Brook tonight. I ran some test trains through the siding and things looked good. I can now run trains from the Aquia Landing entrance to Potomac Siding. I had to wire temporary feeders to the frogs. The locos benefit from the powered frogs. With dead frogs the locos tend to stall.  As I stated in an earlier post,  once I get DCC installed in the locos I'll be able to connect the Frog Juicers to power the frogs.

My problem is not this obvious!

The Continuing Saga of the Engine McCallum 

I fixed the front pick up on the pilot truck of the McCallum by bending the wiper so that it rubs in a non-interfering spot.  But as I tested it more problems have surfaced. It runs fine on straight track. The problem now is on curves. It appears that the engine part of the loco is experiencing a high resistance short when it enters a curve. Just about any curve will cause the problem.

The McCallum tender has a new design that picks up from both sides.  The tender by itself will run just like a "diesel" (note the earlier Mason locos don't have this extra pick up on the tender. They must have the engine attached to pick up on both sides. I can fix this as I add DCC by adding additional wipers to tender axles on those locomotives.) Without the engine attached, the McCallum tender runs fine.  But hook up the engine and it stalls on curves and shorts the track.

I tested every other engine and all four run fine, so it is something wrong in the McCallum's engine. I looked over the engine, but could not find the issue. I'll have to work on this later. For now my objective is to get the wiring done to Falmouth so that we can run the completed sections of track.

Frog Juicer

Not this kind of juicer!

We are back home after a intense week of traveling around the country to attend family affairs. I was pleasantly surprised to find one of Duncan McCree's Hex Frog Juicers in my mail box. This circuit card provides the logic to power six track elements, usually the frog of a turnout, but it also can be used in a reversing section. The unit senses a short  and reverses polarity very quickly, usually faster than the DCC booster circuit breaker can trip and quick enough that sound units operate without interruption. It will not correct a short due to mechanical failure or external factors, like a metal tool on the tracks. But it will work great for controlling the polarity of the frogs on my layout and on the turn tables. Thus I don't need mechanical switches connected to my turnouts to route power. The only draw back is that the system only works for DCC, so I will need to convert my locos to DCC to make these work. I am looking forward to getting these installed.

A Necessary Evil

Wiring... a part of the hobby I don't really enjoy, but it must be done. Now that tracks have reached Aquia Landing, I spent a good part of the weekend cutting gaps, soldering feeders and running bus wires.  I just about have the Brooke Area wiring finished.  Trains were running from Brooke to Aquia Landing on flex track. The flex track will remain in the hidden return track, but will be replaced at Aquia Landing. I started adding roadbed in Aquia, but decided to finish the wiring at Brooke first.

Brooke siding and the hidden track will be one booster. Aquia Landing and the rest of the layout be be on separate boosters. That makes a total of three. But I can try using only one initially. The wiring is set up so that it will be simple to add boosters in the future.

I did some test running from Aquia to Brooke looking at different ways to scenic the back track. Normally my objective is to minimize hidden track, but in this case the best solution really is to hide the return track under a ridge. My wife suggested an alternative of some additional tunnel portals so that a portion of the return track would be visible.

I made a stone portal for the southern end of the tunnel. Once we saw how big the tunel portal was, she aggreed that more tunnels would not look right in the space available.

Once wiring is done I can rough in the terrain forms at Brooke and test the hidden return track to see how it will work in terms of operations. The idea is to force the operators to stop once they enter the tunnel and wait about 5 minutes. This simulates the long run from Aquia Landing to Brooke.

The Tunnel Portal

This is the first, and probably the only,  tunnel portal for the layout. The freelanced model was based on the original western portal at Blue Ridge crossing designed by Crozet. I added a date of 1858 to the face of my tunnel portal. That helps set the time frame for visitors. The tunnel is laser cut using architectural cardboard. It has a slight stone texture. The brick liners are G scale brick plastic card I had on hand. The overscale bricks are not too noticeable in the tunnel lining. I gave the stones a coat of black spray then added the brick liner. I did a quick dry brush and dull cote. I'll touch up the paint once things are dry. You can see one of the black feeder wires in the lower left.


"Painted" Sky
This was the sky that greeted us on the golf course Sunday Morning.  I made me think of  Monet, maybe that's why my golf game was so bad.

Dinner and a Movie

We had a good work session tonight. Jeff and Christian Peck arrived first. Jeff went to work spiking track at Stoneman's Station. I fired up the Xbox 360 and Christian got busy with Modern Warfare 2.

Mark Anderson arrived and proceeded to fix the door to the garage, which I didn't even realize needed repairs. Then he teamed up with Marco to trim the bottom of the door to the work shop. Mark finished the door reversal, while Marco continued to work on the Aquia Harbor benchwork.

JD arrived and we took a break for "show and tell." I had ordered two prints from Brian Kammerer at CW Battle Art and we admired them. Everyone liked them though Alicia and the others really liked the Manassas scene. I think I like the Marshall House one better, so everyone is happy.

After that break JD worked on installing feeders. I went around with a drill and made the holes for the feeders. I marked them with toothpicks. JD prepared a set of wires and began installing them, with solder connections on the bottom of the rails. Red wire to the rear.

I worked on roadbed and gluing ties between Potomac Creek and Brook. It is ready for rail and spikes.

At 10PM we stopped work. We popped Brian Kammerer's DVD, "The Other Great Locomotive Chase" in the player and watched it. One idea inspired by the film that we agreed on was that I should add a balloon camp at Falmouth. The photos below show the balloon Intrepid at Yorktown and in the photo to the right the balloon camp at Falmouth in 1863. The balloon corps was disbanded later in 1863, but it was present in my time frame. That should be a fun and diverting project.

New DCC system

This weekend marked the delivery of a new DCC system for the model railroad. Several local modelers decided to join forces and make a bulk purchase of the CVP Easy DCC system. I got a wireless starter package plus two addtional radio throttles, for a total of 3. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet as I am still working on the steel mill modeling book, but I am itching to give it a spin. I have used Easy DCC in the past at other layouts and it is, well - easy! This is especially true compared to my current 14 year old Digitrax system with its arcane buttom mashing. I know, the newer Digitrax systems are simpler, but after trying several systems out, I liked the Easy DCC best. Since there are now three other layouts in our area with Easy DCC, we can use our throttles at each other's layout.

Next step is to install some sound decoders in the locomotives.

Double Slip Switch Update- Dead Frogs Working!

In an earlier post I described the double slip stub switch I built for my layout. Now, I have finished wiring on the part of the layout where this switch is located. I have been testing with locos and the few cars I have. All the frogs are powered except the two on this double slip switch. I am pleasantly surprised to learn that the dead frogs don't seem to be stalling the locos. They have been making it through very well.

I did order a set of auto-reverse units from Tony's Train Exchange, but maybe I won't need them.