Fast Clocks

I got out the fast clocks today and hooked them up to make sure they were working. Of course some had issues. The three original ones I got from GML Enterprises were doing fine. The newer ones were hesitating some. One of the boxes needed a wire re-soldered and the gears were not connecting.
I got all that straightened out and all of the clocks were running together up to 10:1 and then the newer ones started to run slower, to the tune of 5 fast minutes per fast hour. Since I only run at that speed during staging this should not be a problem.
Now to find the places to put them so that everyone can see them when necessary.

Phone System Working

This picture is for the DS call system.

After much trials, tribulations and cussing, I finally have the phone system working. I only broke two high dollar signals while running wire.

Right now the needed buttons are working. They will need to be relabeled to match this layout.

There will be less towns from the last layout so I will eventually have to redo the face of this panel.
There is one more phone to install, but that section of the layout has not been built yet.

The only thing left that hasn’t been done is the fast clock. I hope model railroading gets back to fun, this week was not that.

Phone system backboard

In case you were wondering….The main board that holds the phone connections has been installed. I also have connected the DS panel to this backboard. Now to connect the individual phones around the layout.

Phone System

I have been dreading having to get out the phone system and get it working again. I did mark wires and took pictures before I took things apart. It was a good thing too. I had did have a difficult time at times when first wiring it up. Mostly because phone wiring diagrams are different from what I used to.

So I had to go back try try and figure things out again. The first thing was to hook up two phones and see if they worked. They did. On to the next step. Getting the DS call box working. This was a little more tricky. The 12 vdc wires were Black and Green and I didn't remember what was the positive wire. I used an off color because I already used the normal colors for something else. I fixed that this time around. So did I replace the Green with red OR did I use the Green as ground. When first hooked up and wires were swapped and still didn't work, I wasn't sure where to go. Then I noticed there was and extra black wire at the phone connections….then I remembered that we had to use an extra wire as a common hooked to my accessory bus, because with the call light and busy light we didn't have enough wires. That wire was black so I figured it went to the old black (common).

After some testing it turned out that Green replaced red and now the busy light works, the call button will buzz the local station. Things are looking up. The last thing to get going was the DS headset. I had hiccups with this before and currently I still do.
Back to it again tomorrow. This puzzle is the last piece of getting my layout back to what I had before the move. If all else fails at least radios work…for the short term.

Getting more rolling stock ready

 Since the CTC panel programming is complete and since I had more resistors wheels ready to go, it was time to start adding more rolling stock to the layout. My wheels are going to an Intermountain wheel set with 10k resistors soldered on the two outside wheels. There were plenty of wheelsets to work on.

I was able to get about 30 cars cleaned up and checked out with the new wheel sets and placed on the layout. I will have to get their car cards and waybills printed out to bring them up to date and make them ready to be used. Of course now I will need more engines out to pull them. 

Still hoping for a September op session.

Signal Updates

I have been working on t he signals for awhile now. All of the heads currently installed are able to be lit as needed. The computer sees all of the signals and will display whatever aspect I want.

The first step was too get the signals working on simple logic in JMRI. That is working as is expected. The signals react to turnout position and occupancy detection as expected. No direction control.

The next step was to get the CTC part working. To do this I had to go back to the old layout files and figure out what I did then. What I wanted was the signals to reset after a train goes through. And enough signals to go red to prevent a head on meeting. So when the dispatch activates a signal, all of the appropriate opposing signals go red. They stay red until the dispatch says otherwise.

Well this has been done and some of it has been checked, but I ran out of time to finish it. Hopefully tomorrow.

On another note my new resistor wheels are on the way and I can move on to getting more rolling stock on the layout.