Monday, February 21, 2011

An Addition to the Roster?

On a recent Saturday morning I had to mind my 4 year old grandson and Chris suggested that I take him to Casula Hobbies for his first outing to a hobby shop.
OK I thought this could be fun.
We set off to Joe's shop at Liverpool with Cameron asking the odd question that showed he wasn't sure what the trip was about.
When we arrived, Joe in his usual friendly manner introduced himself to Cameron and I then introduced him to Therese, Laurie and Kerroby Bob. Well his eyes popped out as he made his way around the store, straight to the cars first; as he explained it to me a couple of months ago "You like trains and I like cars". Cameron is often with me in the train room and likes me to run the trains while he plays with the HO cars on the layout, I find them in all sorts of places later.
He then started asking a lot of questions about many of the things he saw in the shop as is the habit of 4 year olds.
At one stage Laurie showed him a chocolate and asked him what he wanted, his answer? "A train"!
Laurie was so stunned that he had to come and tell Joe and I about this 4 year old who turned down a chocolate for a train.
Well I was planning on buying him a small car for his collection and thought I might ask him if he would like a car later before we left.
I did and he took me to the Thomas range and pointed at James!
I thought OK but you need a carriage to go behind it, so I included a small 6 wheel green passenger car.
So now I present you with a video of Cameron having his first drive of his first locomotive. I should point out that this is the first time he has driven any train on Bylong or used an NCE Procab.
After about 10 minutes he was driving slowly with only a couple of promptings from me and stopping the train in the station and all, I was impressed at the concentration and care he took but then I am his grandad.
I should also let you know that James being in OO and not being an actual model of a real locomotive had a couple of clearance problems as it progressed around the layout. The cab roof hit a tunnel entrance which was removed (not yet glued in place) and then it hit the bottom of the secondary branch post on the bracket signal at the branch junction (it projects out over the track at the correct height). So it will be restricted in its running rights.
I had a look at it to see if I could lower the cab roof but it isn't really a candidate unfortunately.
I don't know if this interest will last but we will see.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

A question about the 44 video

Iain S asked why the 44 seemed to jump away as it started to move in the first video of my last post.

The 44 is not mine and was one I had just finished installing the Tsunami decoder in and giving it a weathering job. I suspect the lurch was caused by paint on the wheels and then the power breaking through suddenly. I gave it a wheel spin in some CRC 2-26 later on when it stopped occasionally as it went around the layout which solved it. My44s do not have this issue.

Perhaps I should have redone the video after cleaning the wheels.

If you have a problem locomotive the Tsunami does allow adjustment of the BEMF CVs but this is best done using DecoderPro after you have saved the settings in your loco as the BEMF can get a bit confusing and needs to be adjusted carefully. Download the Tsunami technical documentation and manual, read it and well done if you can understand the BEMF instructions. A case of someone who knows what they are talking about not being able to come down to the level of most users when trying to explain things.