IS MODEL RAILROADING FUN??
IS MODEL RAILROADING FUN??
Tuesday, March 24, 2009. The regularly scheduled operating night on Dividing Creek, as well as a couple of days before RailRun.
Everything is going along swimmingly until about halfway through the session. The railroad decides to DIE. DEAD AS THE PROVERVBIAL DOOR NAIL. REALLY, MOST SINCERELY DEAD.
For probably about two hours, Ace, Bob Sheaff and I looked, disconnected, reconnected various components of the power supply without success. Everyone else at the session helped by removing locomotives, unplugging throttles and generally ensuring that nothing visible was causing the massive short circuit.
Then, Bob Sheaff suggested that we try wiring around the first DPS in line, since that has the only red signal wire (signal wires are red, black and green) between the DPSes and the signal amplifier. So we jumped around using the second DPS in line and VIOLA! Everything was back. Since it was so late, the session was abandoned and yours truly (being tired of model railroading for the time being) went to bed.
Next morning, bright and early, (with only a day and half before RailRun), I had breakfast and relaxed. But then, down to the railroad and pulled DPS #1 and replaced it with one from my stock of back-up units. Once again:VIOLA! I tested everything and all seemed well.
But, alas, all was only partly well. Friday night of RailRun, we found that the higher channel (15-18) locomotives were not running. Oh, well, we were able to work around that situation for the rest of the weekend.
At the RailRun banquet Saturday evening, Both Ace and Bob Adams confirmed what I had suspected, when I replaced the faulty DPS, I must have messed up the connection between the other two DPS units and the amplifier. The high channel locos ran fine in the (new) DPS #1 area, but not the others. So, back to the soldering iron. unconnected the green signal wire, re-established the connections and soldered everything back together.
Finally, Dividing Creek seems to be back in business. So, I guess model railroading is still fun.
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