Collecting More Rolling Stock

Even though I still haven't begun construction of the actual layout, there's still lots of things to do that go towards the eventual goal of having an opperational layout, and that's collecting rolling stock.

As well as buying an NCE Power Cab, the Epping Model Railway Exhibition also saw a triple pack of Austrains FME LCL container flat wagons come home with me. These are very nicely detailed, and the wagon itself being of mostly metal construction are very nicely weighted. The LCL containers which are removable are very fine in detail and really are a very nice piece of work.

As well as the FME's, the past few weeks have see me scouring the dreaded Ebay for all manner of things, but mostly brake vans. With the era I'm modelling each train has to have a brake van at the end of it, so to even have a modest amount of trains running I'm going to need a good supply of brake vans.

So with a little bit of luck and some last second bidding I managed to get three Powerline MHG brake vans in the past few weeks. Now these have been on the market, on and off for nearly twenty years with no upgrades, so do not represent the latest in detail standards being achived by people like Trainorama, however they can be found for around $20.00 if you are lucky, as opposed to the upcoming Trainorama MHG's which will be about $120.00 a pair.

Now the Trainorama versions will be spectacular going by the advanced samples, and I will definitely get at least one pair of these, however the three Powerline one's I have bought will allow me to do a bit of modifying and actual modelling to try to bring them up to as close to current standards as possible. It's nice to be able to buy RTR stuff that doesn't need any real detailing, but where's the fun in that all the time!

Besides with work on the layout not yet begun, it's good to have a few other projects to work on through this cold and wet winter we are currently experiencing.

Buying and Hooking Up a DCC System

After many months of reading up on all the different DCC systems, looking at the pro's and con's, talking to different people and listening to their opinions, I purchased an NCE Power Cab at the Model Railroad Craftsman (http://www.mrrc.com.au/) stand at the Epping model railway exhibition.

Three weeks later I've only just had time to have a read through the manual, and look at hooking it up to a simple test track to have a bit of a play with.

Of course the first thing I needed to do was hook up some wires to the tracks and like most things that's not as simple as it sounds.

Like often happens, when it's 7pm at night and you begin these projects you can't just run down to the shops to buy the materials you need. This was the case with wire unfortunately, with me only having some big thick wire I normally use for wiring up rather beefy ignition systems in cars. However I did have some CAT5 network cable laying about, and thought that it would probably be ok for my simple test track use. I don't think this is the best wire for the layout however and will use something a little more robust.

So after stripping the ends of two pairs of wire, I tinned the ends with solder and began to solder them to a length of Peco code 75 rail. I don;t necessarily have any trouble soldering the wire to the rail, but it's always a fiddly job and I've wondered if there isn't a better way?

When building my points, I use printed circuit board for certain sleepers, and it occurred to me that this may also be a good way of hooking up power to the rails rather than simply wiring power directly to the rails.

So armed with a piece of pcb, I drilled two small holes through it, one at each end, and cut an isolating gap in each side of the pcb. The wire was fed through the holes so it was flush on one side, and then it was soldered on both sides of the pcb. The pcb sleeper was then very easily soldered to the rails.

I had wondered if there wold possibly be a voltage drop using this method, however after attaching a 9 volt battery to the wires, I grabbed my multimeter and got the following readings.

9.49 volts at the battery terminals, 9.49 volts at the end of the wires where they join the pcb, and 9.49 volts measured off the rails a couple of inches away from the pcb sleeper. This tells me that obviously my soldering skills are not too bad, and that at least as far as volage is concerned there is no perceptable drop with this method.

I can see some definite advantages by using this method, and can't think of any disadvantages, but I would be interested to hear if anyone can think of any.

After doing all the soldering and testing the voltages and taking some photos along the way, I decided it was too late to go and unpack my Garratt and give it a run, and decided to update this blog instead as I haven't written much lately.

Maybe tomorrow I'll finally start playing with my new DCC system!