28
Feb
DCC Problems
Just a quick update. After discussion with some friends and local experts on DCC. It was decided that my power supply may be going bad. So for $40 I went out and purchased a new supply and hope to get it installed this weekend or first time I get some time.
My old power supply was about 9 years old and was purchased fron Tony’s Train Exchange via mail order. Tony’s is in Vermont. These first power supplies did not come with and enclosure and so you had to buy one for it. Over the years, I understand that there could have been problems with them. But hey, I had mine for at least 9 years. I don’t know if that is normal shelf life or not, but no complaints from me.
A.J.
16
Feb
The Fun With DCC
Have you ever had one of those days where nothing goes right. Or you have a project you are working on and one glitch leads to another. You end up spending som much time trying to take the easy way out, you end up spending more time than what you would have done if you had done it right in the first place.
What I am talking about here is my test track. I cheaped out on the wiring and used 20 gauge wires. This worked well until I put a locomotive on it that was equipped with a QSI decoder. It programmed well but then when I flipped the switch to have the test track get mainline power, the locomotive did not respond. Frustration sets in.
So I go get my handy voltage detector and start testing everything. Well this story is not over. I replaced all the wiring except for the last foot, with 16 gauge stranded. This did the trick in that all my locomotives worked again, except this one with the QSI decoder. It is not the locomotive as it runs perfectly on the test track. So the problem has to be the last couple of feet of 20 – 22 gauge wire. So next weekend I plan to take out this wire and solder the 16 gauge wire to the track. I hope it works.
I knew that QSI locomotives drew some power, but I never ran into this problem before as the rest of my layout is wired with 14 gauge stranded bus and and 18 gauge drops. You live and learn and waste time in the process. I will let you know how it goes once I solder the 16 gauge to the track.
15
Feb
Winter Projects
It has been a snowy winter here in eastern Massachusetts. A lot of snow, but unfortunately I have not had the time to go out and get more snow pictures. After spending all the time digging out it seems the last thing on my mind is to go out again in the cold and wet and try to get some pictures of trains. Especially since the predictability and timing is harder than ever this year. I must be getting old. So this winter I have concentrated more on my model railroad.
I finally built a 10 foot straight test track. I also purchased a scale speedometer that you can get from Greenway Products or www.trainspeed.com. It took me longer than I thought to build it. What I thought would take a couple of hours, ended up taking up the better part of weekend. Now that I have it, I can check out my locomotives and adjust the speed settings, via DCC so that they can run together. I wrote an article about it for my local clubs newsletter. I will publish here after the newsletter is out. I also spent some time cleaning up my work area.
I am still in the midst of some projects. My coal mine is coming along and since I moved a piece of track I had used for programming, I now have more space for the little coal mine community. There are always things to keep me busy on my railroad. Time to fix things here and there. Regular maintenance. My home layout is roughly a 10ft by 10ft layout. It keeps me busy and it makes me wonder how some people manage to build these basement empires.
Until next time, stay warm, stay safe.
AJ
