Bill and Tom's EXCELLENT ADVENTURE in Logging and Mining

gbwdude

General Manager, W.R.Ry.
Gents,

The turnouts have finally been ordered, and it looks like I picked a good time to do it too. I ordered them from Caboose Hobbies and currently they have a St. Patty's Day sale, so I got a extra 17% off. See... procrastination pays off sometimes! Too bad I won't have them by Monday though as shipping time is 2-5 days.

On another note, I haven't touched the Possum Hollow observation all week. It seems like this has been a wicked week full of ups and downs and some job uncertainty. Combine that with a two and a half year old daughter and there's no fun time for me. Oh well though, there will be time in the future for my stuff.

Tyler
 

Bill Nelson

Well-Known Member
I remember well those years with the younguns. Dr. Tom and I used to schedule our train time around our daughter's play dates.


When I was doing the full time medical duty on my My #2 son , I moved all the fragile stuff off the lower levels of my home layout , and let him play there, while I worked on or played with the upper decks. other wise, I'd have gone two years without any train time at all.


It is great that we got switches coming, it will be nice to start fixing the Ft. Nashborough yard. I love dealing with Caboose, they do good
 

gbwdude

General Manager, W.R.Ry.
Bill,

I got a little free time today, so I ripped apart one of the F7's donated by Dave and extracted the bearings you need. I also recieved the club's switches today and boy do they look sweet! I can't wait to see them installed and operational.

I'll post pics later of the Hustler project, we have a dinner date arranged for tonight and I'm being summoned as we speak... or type.

Tyler
 

Bill Nelson

Well-Known Member
Today I am going to try to fit a bearing in the possum hollow unit, and perhaps also do something with it's headlight/ it has a LED in the short hood side , but no light source on the long hood side, so I may add a light bulb if I have one, while I am in there to install the missing bearing.

I will also cut out the motor plug on the Southern Rwy #722, and hard wire the motor to the Tsunami, and see what happens.
 

gbwdude

General Manager, W.R.Ry.
Bill,

Did you still need the bearings that I harvested for you? And on another note, I will be bringing the new #8's to the club to be installed. At last we may be able to get some trains running again on that side of the layout.

Tyler
 

Bill Nelson

Well-Known Member
I did not think that video was that well done, the music drowned out the sound of the locomotive, and the photographer was to quick to cut away once the locomotive was out of the frame.


what is well done is this logo I have just designed for the possum hollow railway. I drew some inspiration for the logo for the possum lodge from the Red Green show
 

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gbwdude

General Manager, W.R.Ry.
Bill,

I have good news and bad news. The good news is I got around to poking at your Southern #722 and got the decoder in it reprogrammed. The bad news is nothing changed. One bizarre thing I noticed when I tried to read the CV's for motor start voltage, address and the manufacturer's ID (the one used to reset the decoder) is the command station was giving me a TDC stating there was no acknowledgement from the decoder typically during decoder write operations. It doesn't even make sense, since I was attempting to read the CV's. As long as I don't get sucked into the idiot box (TV, specifically the History Channel) like I did today, tomorrow I can take a more aggressive look into it, maybe check motor voltage like we discussed... per your permission. If that's ok, is there anything I need to know as far as special care on disassembly or any modifications you did I need to pay attention to?

Tyler
 
Z

Zathros

Any of you guys have an O'scope, to see what kind of signal is coming out of there? I have no kind of experience in this, but I fixed TV's to component level, and if your dealing with a square wave, either the carrier signal is of, the amplitude is off, a bad cap or coil, or resistor, is misshaping the shape of the square way and the command ends up not being decoded. Unless it is something far simpler. Just a thought.




dont-whiz-on-the-electric-fence.jpg
 

Bill Nelson

Well-Known Member
Tyler,

The tender shell is attached to the tender frame by one screw in the middle. the decoder is fastened to the top of the tender shell, removing the shell exposes all the needed wires the oarnge and grewy wires from the decoder are the motor eat wires, so to test them, cut them on the decoder side of the heatshrink, and skin the insulation enough to get a multimeter on them, I'm sure you will find the decoder is fubared.

what a pisser!, but it sure does sound good. if it testds bad just rleave the tender shell off, run the screw in it's post so it doesn't get lost and I'll remove the decoder for return to Soundtrax.


Nelson
 

gbwdude

General Manager, W.R.Ry.
Bill,

No need to ship it off to Soundtraxx, your decoder has motor voltage coming out of it. And I'm not gonna lie, not many things bother me in life anymore after being mortared, shot at, and driving down 41A, but a huge rat nest of wires does. One thing I'll try to do for you and this loco is see if I have enough correctly colored wire and redo the motor wires and your positive (red) pickup on the bottom of the locomotive (it looks like a bad wire). Also while into it I noticed your attempt at fixing the screw under the pilot truck, so I replaced it with one I had in my stock.

I'll take a break from that for now and hopefully go at it either tonight again or tomorrow.

Tyler
 

Bill Nelson

Well-Known Member
Tyler, those wires showed good continuity last time I was in there and the motor ran off dc cheated onto those wires, do you have a motor you could cheat onto the decoder output to see if we have current sufficient under load, voltage will fool you , cause you can have voltage with next to no amps, and you don't have squat.


thats why I always tested for voltage with a test light when working on cars, cause the light gives you an idea of the total power, voltage will fool you sometimes.

Nelson
 
Z

Zathros

On those small engines you can easily run an ammeter without worrying about burning it out. Hold whe wheels under load, and you might be able to find out if you have a bad winding or some kind of weak spot. On Sony T.V., any corrosion of the surface of the traces would cut out the sound chip. Since electricity, under low voltage like that, draws so little amperage, any corrosion will stop the electron flow, as electricity really flows on the top of a wire, not through it. I was a certified electronic technician in Connecticut, even had my own T.V. repair shop for many years. Now with the electronics available for "N" scale trains and the like they have made then even more much fun! :)
 

gbwdude

General Manager, W.R.Ry.
Bill,

I can try cheating in another motor into the circuit to see what the issue is. I do believe I have a test light somewhere also to test amperage coming off the decoder. I'll see how it goes later on today, some more stuff from eBay sold so I have to run to the post office and drop some stuff off at Goodwill and then train time will commence. If you're still available I could just come over and we could brain storm this beast together, just let me know.

Tyler
 

gbwdude

General Manager, W.R.Ry.
Bill,

I actually got around to the Southern locomotive this morning and spliced in another motor onto the motor out leads. We do have voltage and amperage enough to run a motor coming from the decoder as when it was hooked up it turned the motor in both directions. If I get time this afternoon I'll attempt to get near the motor to find out if its a loose wire from the motor, a pinched wire or something else. I'm thinking either way I'll return it to you tomorrow since my train time is severely limited now.

Tyler
 

Bill Nelson

Well-Known Member
Bill,

I actually got around to the Southern locomotive this morning and spliced in another motor onto the motor out leads. We do have voltage and amperage enough to run a motor coming from the decoder as when it was hooked up it turned the motor in both directions. If I get time this afternoon I'll attempt to get near the motor to find out if its a loose wire from the motor, a pinched wire or something else. I'm thinking either way I'll return it to you tomorrow since my train time is severely limited now.

Tyler


Tyler, unless you have started already, save your train time for other projects, and let me crack this, as I have been into tinis locomotive, and another identical locomotive about nine times, and it is ugly. I have a lot of fine wires< I can probably run a new course faster than you can, cracking this locomotive open is tough, getting it back together is even harder


Thanks.


Bill
 

gbwdude

General Manager, W.R.Ry.
Bill,

I have heeded your advice prior to reading this as I studied the hell out of the destructions on hoseeker.net and still was apprehensive to rip into it. I did get the Whiskey River's first locomotive lettered today, pics soon to follow on my page.

Also since I've cleaned off a good portion of my workbench since my wife's vacation, I think it's time I get back to my Hustler project and see if my theory will work with F7 gear towers.

Tyler
 

Bill Nelson

Well-Known Member
we tested one of the shinohara switches with some long equipment, and dis not have any momentary shorts, so we are hoping the solid points on the shinohara switches will not cause us grief, and Tyler started blocking one in on the front of the helix down to the lower level staging. this will reduce the track to a single track main by the big yard, we have a single track main everywhere else, and the single track main will make setting up the yard much easier.


on the other end of the layout Bob and I were getting some track down on the outside of the return loop at the lower level far wall. So far I'm just putting in the outside track and the switches to the inner two tracks where we will be able to store two trains in off layout staging.


Bob and I had a lot of fun trying to get the #6 switch in on the outside of the loop positioned where it will cause the least disruption to the smoothness of the curve
 

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Bill Nelson

Well-Known Member
epic paint fail!

I have two passenger cars I have been building from old MDC plastic full length wooden passenger car kits. I had started the first one , the combine, maybe 20 years ago, but never finished, the second, I started a year or two ago. they both started off as a mail car, with several windows, and two baggage doors on each side. I cut out one of the doors and shortened the car to make the combine. To built the coach I cut out both of the sets of baggage doors, taking care to get the car the same length as the first car.


I intended these cars to be for the Standard gauge portion of the Marietta and North Georgia, where it interchanges with my Dead Grass, Crooked Creek & Western, at State Line Georgia. I had painted the first car with spray paint years ago, and that can was no longer available, nor did I have any appropriate spray paint, so I sprayed both of them brown to get the interior color I wanted, and tested my supply of acrylics. I found a bottle labeled Manganese blue, and did some test spots on some card board, and even on a piece of plastic painted the same brown as the cars got.

The test spots all looked really good, a deep royal blue, close to the B&O's old passenger colors so I painted the cars. It took two coats, as it did not cover well. The results are ok under some lights, and appear to be a dark blue, but under some lighting, the cars look purple, which won't do at all.

So the cars will go back to the paint shop eventually. I'm posting this on the Club thread, rather than my home layout thread, as these cars may get leased to the possum Hollow railroad for a while. If I do the big rebuild for my home layout, these cars could be tagged onto the DG, CC & W RR passenger train, allowing M & M G passengers to ride from the north side of Atlanta all the way to Harlow Tennessee without changing cars. Right now, the Georgia staging @ State Line is a construction zone, and I struggle to patch in a return loop on the M & N G Narrow gauge just inches below the bottom of the shelf for Geogkayoosa, I'm going to tote them to the club tonight to see what Bob thinks about them.

I have enough Pike stuff seats to add seats to the cars.

Nelson
 

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