Jim came over from Adelaide and tweaked the Digitrax PM42's to trip earlier than the Zephyr. Now the 8 blocks work as they should during a track short circuit.
While Jim was here we removed the switching layout from the back room. Seven years ago, I carried the 7' long board into the house on my own. We both struggled to get it back into the garage! I felt somewhat enfeebled. Maybe we had too much red the night before?
The test track now needed to be made stand alone, as it was hinged to the switching layout. I used 1" aluminium square tube and new joiners from Bunnings hardware. I noticed that the joiners are much harder and have less give (I broke one removing it from the tube) than those from Capral Aluminium. The tube also seems to be fractionally smaller internal than Capral. This meant belting the daylights out of the joiners to get them home.
The end result. The board flips over the test layout to protect the track.
Overall view of the test track using Kato Unitrack. Note the double row of brass hinges to allow the side to fold up and cover the track.
Jim and I did a bit of running (not the physical stuff!) on the layout. We both enjoyed a couple of hours and then needed to open another bottle of red.
I bought a Digitrax stationary sound decoder. I wanted to replace the GP 38 with a U boat sound. That killed a few hours. What should have been straightforward, proved to be a challenge and the GP 38 was gone, but we couldn't get a peep out of the decoder. Many re-installs did not solve the problem. It turned out that we had a dud CV number. The answer was in the manual, but we overlooked that line. That was one day gone and we celebrated with some red. That was good, so we had some more. A MUCH slower day the next day.....ooooh.
Jim hard at work relieving me of some red before it goes off.
Jim looking pleased at being able to help. Thanks for your help.
