Now for a little noise and movement





4429 outside McCauleys Hide Merchants at BYLONG

I have been working for a while on trying to come up with a suitable set of parameters for DCC operation of diesels, to, as much as is possible within the constraints of the various decoder specific features and CVs, give us realistic operation.


I am reasonably close now and have decided to share my findings.

This video shows a Trainorama NSWGR 44 class (4429) fitted with a SoundTraxx Tsunami TSU-AT1000 Atlas form factor (board shape) Alco v12 251 sound decoder that has been adjusted to show the current state of my investigations. For those that are interested I retained the front Trainorama speaker but used an enclosure sold by Gary at the Model Railroad Craftsman at Blacktown NSW.

I use JMRI DecoderPro to adjust the CVs and have saved various set ups as templates to enable me to download them into a new diesel in seconds.

The NSWGR used to state the continuous tractive effort of each of their diesel classes the the maximum load and speed attained on a 1 in 40 grade.

Here is the data for the main NSWGR diesel classes:

Class    Maximum Load and Speed
40        400 tons at 15 mph
42        720 tons at 9 mph
421      630 tons at 11.25 mph
422      630 tons at 11.25 mph
43        510 tons at 12 mph
44        600 tons at 11.75 mph
442      600 tons at 11.75 mph
45        640 tons at 11 mph
47        490 tons at 8 mph
48        450 tons at 8 mph
49        470 tons at 7 mph

Note: mph is miles per hour for the young ones ;-)Now I know there are people out there who have driven diesels but I am trying to keep this relatively simple as the current state of decoder development doesn’t allow us to drive our models realistically.

A diesel achieves its maximum power when the diesel engine is in notch eight, the control of the engine having eight notches.

I initially set up one of my 44 class diesels to give 10mph in notch eight to replicate an average of the above conditions for a heavy goods load.

The Tsunami has two different ways of controlling notching:

It can be set up so that the engine notching noise can be changed separately to the speed of the locomotive (as in real life), the speed of the locomotive being controlled by the electric traction motors.

Or, it can be set up so that notching increases will occur at a set number of speed steps, e.g. every 10 steps, but the train can increase speed between these steps of course as it is the diesel engine notching up separately to the electric traction motors.

I initially tried the first method but quickly found that I would have the locomotive doing one thing while the engine sounds were doing another, mainly due to my distraction by other things happening on the layout.

As a result I chose the less realistic second method (the real drivers and purists will probably choose the first method).

Now I use the NCE DCC system and have standardised on the ProCab with its many options. One option is the use of buttons to control the locomotive speed and the ProCab has to sets of buttons, one set for small increments (1 step per press) and the another set for large increases and decreases (4 steps in 28 step mode and 10 steps in 128 step mode).

I use the 128 step mode and as such each press of the large buttons will notch up the diesel engine but will also display 10, 20, 30, etc. which tells you what notch you are in.

In combination with the notching I have set the maximum speed at 56 mph which can be reached by continuing past speed step 80 until speed step 126 (max. step on NCE) is reached.

Now we move to a really useful feature of most NCE cabs and that is that they have a momentum button that allows you to adjust the momentum of a train very easily. It is best to do this when it is stopped of course, like when you first couple up to your train. The momentum button will accept a number between 0 and 9, 0 being no momentum and 9 being the maximum.

A further aspect is the ability to use speed curves that can be programmed into a decoder and the Tsunami is set up with a special speed curve that I have devised.

The end result of all this is that you can start the diesel with a press on the small increment button and hear the diesel engine start to crank over and then fire. I then press down 1 speed step back to 0 to idle.

Next set the momentum for your train, I have been working on counting 2 - 3 bogie wagons in the train per increase in momentum number. I use a base of momentum 2 to represent the inertia on the diesel locomotive itself (light engine). The determination of the number of bogie wagons per momentum number is really a function of your layout, mainly its size and hence the length of the trains that you run.

Now, number boards on, headlight on as appropriate then hit the horn and start to notch up. If you have a momentum above 6 then you can notch up the engine to notch 8 if you wish and wait for the train to slowly move away as it takes the load.

One night when the Ramblers were at my place I had set up three locomotives one at 10mph notch 8, one at 15mph notch 8 and another at 20mph notch 8 and I asked them to drive each and we would decide on a suitable version. The decision wasn’t unanimous with most liking the 15mph and a couple the 20mph, it was decided that the 10mph was too slow at east for my size of layout (possibly good on a small layout for a slower run).

I have since driven at the 15mph notch 8 and feel that maybe the 20mph might be better, less realistic perhaps but more suited to a locomotive that is used on both goods and passenger trains.

The final bit of realism is supplied by the Tsunami decoder itself as it can actually brake a train. The decoder has a brake on Function 11 that will slow the train without reducing the throttle, just like the real thing. This braking effect is adjustable through a CV and needs to be set through trial and error after the above aspects are set up.

Function 11 on the NCE ProCab though is awkward to use so I re-mapped the brake to Function 7 where strangely enough there is a brake/wheel squeal noise, so now I can hit the brake and get the brakes squealing as the train pulls to a slow stop even with the throttle still on. Once the train is stopped I can release the brake and if the throttle is still open the train will slowly regain speed.

Another feature of the Tsunami is that by pressing Function 4 you can turn on dynamic braking when on a grade. The Tsunami can be set to drop the engine to either notch 1 or notch 4 while the dynamics are operating. As NSWGR diesels use notch 4 this is what I set it for.

Watch this video and listen right at the start for the engine to drop to notch 4 then the dynamics come in, you can of course combine this with actual braking, brake squeal and all.

So there you have it, not perfect yet but very driveable and great fun as well.



How's that for Prototypically Straight Track?

I am of course referring to my latest Desktop picture to the right.

I should apologise for my recent blog post where I led with a photo that I used on my last blog 5 weeks before!

Goes to show something, getting old? No don't answer that.

In the previous blog I also showed a picture of an overgrown siding and as can be seen by my desktop photo at right I have been a bit busy this weekend.
Here are a few more photos that I took to see how it was going, some areas still need some more work and clean up (grass laying all over the station parking area), etc.
Basically I have given the BYLONG station yard a going over scenically including the trees and I have finally finished the dam that supplies water for the livestock at the abbatoir, well nearly.

Lastly, I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and leave you with this 'Christmas card', my first attempt at adding smoke and steam.

Ray P

A Long Time Since....

Yes, it is a long time since I posted on the blog, not since 30 October to be exact.
It has been a time of small changes to the layout and I mean small.
However, I was motivated tonight to post when I received this link of a 1964 film on Australian Railways in an email from Blair Kooistra of North of Narrabri only to discover that Blair had finally posted again when I went to copy his blog link for this post, I will leave you to check his blog but I will say that his is a very similar story except that mine was Triang in 1960 and polished Masonite.
What have I been doing?
Here is a photo of the new scenery around the Wollar flour mill with 3390 passing the Cassilis branch junction bracket signal and yes, it does work.

Another addition is this fine small shop built by Phil Gibson of Trainorama that I picked up a month or so ago at Toms Hobbies, Phil does very nice work and he makes these up every so often; I also have a large shop version of his that I bought a couple of years ago.

I was using my 3 year old $1400+ digital video camera at my Grandson's first birthday a couple of weeks ago and turned it off only to discover that it wouldn't turn on again. After dropping it into the approved repairer and waiting a week I was informed that the main board was dead and a replacement would be $700, it cost me $77 to find this out.
After several days of pondering over repairing or buying a new one I decided on the latter as I couldn't overcome my concern that if the main board could die so quickly once what was to stop a replacement from doing the same again.
I bought a JVC GZ-HD620 full high definition digital video camera, normal retail $999 for $799, that came with a free 8GB SD card and a promotion to get a free 500GB portable hard drive by following some simple steps and mailing in the required proof including the bar code from the box - BARGAIN!
I have been spending the last week experimenting with it and shooting some BYLONG videos, nothing to post yet but soon maybe.
Although it has full high definition of 1920 x 1080 it is difficult to produce a YouTube video that shows the clarity as uploaded videos seem to loose something along the way. I have also worked out that I need more light to acheive a higher f stop for a better depth of field. Now the thing with digital video cameras or at least the ones I can afford is that the highest f stop is usually only f3.0 but the GZ-HD620 had f4.7. My dead video camera had f8 but when I tried to use it everything was too dark, back to the lighting issue.
OK, here is a trial video as I couldn't help myself, 6037 climbing towards BYLONG on a coal train, yes I know that the coal is going in the wrong direction.

I picked up some new scenery materials recently from the Model Railroad Craftsman at Blacktown NSW. Gary and Maria have what I would say amounts to the largest range of scenery products around. The items of interest were new static grasses in dead grass colours (and greens) from MiniNatur at $13.50 per 50g pack. I have previously used Heki Winterboden which is a good dead grass colour but it is only about 2 - 3mm long, this MiniNatur grass is 6.5mm long, just the thing for that thigh high dead grass so common in Australia. I got a Beige, Golden Beige (yellower) and a slightly green but almost dead grass colour called Late Fall.
Here is a photo I took of an oil siding on BYLONG that is overgrown and little used. I know that oil sidings would probably have been kept clear of grass due to the fire hazard but I couldn't resist having a go with the new grasses.

I used Pascoes Self Shining Long Life Floor Polish (really a waterbased clear coating) as mentioned on Julian Watson's VR Days blog as an experiment to glue the grass and it worked well, it can be found at Bunnings and Woolworths for about $5 for 500ml and at Bunnings in 5 litres for $35, I am going to get this size soon. Like Julian I also tried it with ballast and will shortly try it with soils. It doesn't dry as hard as say PVA so could be useful if you need to take up some track later.
Well, that's about it for now, it's 11:33pm and I had better head for the shower and bed.

What's Been Happening?

Another drought of posts from Bylong it seems but what has been happening?

Well, a few things that I didn't seem to think were worth talking about but maybe if I put them all together?

I just finished another hand held video of a train moving over the main line as an experiment in working out good angles, etc. I like it but the sound coming from the locos does get a bit boring but then I suppose it would be if you were driving them. There is a cycling noise coming from 4434 which has an Alco v251 12 cylinder Soundtraxx Tsunami but not from 4530 which has an older Alco Soundtraxx DSD decoder. The 45 also sounds more 'rounded' even though it has the 8 bit decoder compared with the 16 bit Tsunami. I put this down to the use of a good quality oval speaker in the fuel tank of the 45 as against the supplied Trainorama speaker in the 44. I think that the cycling sound is because I had been playing with the reverb settings, I must check. Also the horn that can be heard as they start out of Wollar has a vibration which is a wire running across the speaker front. I have to open up the 44 to fix this and we all know what an interesting job that is.

Two weeks ago I bit the bullet and decided to do the scenery around the flour mill at Wollar that is situated between Wollar and the branch junction. I think I managed a reasonable transition to the backscene although the general impression is too much green (it is supposed to be set in the spring of 1965 so it's probably not that bad).

I now have a 3 foot section (sorry, no metric this is 1965 remember) between the flour mill and Wollar station which is a drawbridge section used to enter the layout from the house. Part of one of the hinges can be seen in the lower right of the above photo. There are two hinges and they will be an interesting challenge to scenic and keep operating as they stick up above the baseboard by about 1 1/2 inches. Anyway, the Wollar loop ends on this section of the layout about half way across and I have decided to add a level crossing after the point with some shops and small industries on either side of the road and crossing. I dug into my collection of kits last night and think I have come up with some interesting possibilities but you will have to wait, don't hold your breath.

I went to a 90th birthday party last Sunday for my great aunt who is the last of five sisters and three brothers who came to Sydney from Werris Creek in the late 1930's. Needless to say there was some railway connection.

My wife Chris has been doing family history for the last 25 years or so and a few years back we called into Werris Creek station museum before it was done up and in the books and various documents on display were some records showing details of the workers including family members. To my astonishment she has since found something like 10 or so that have worked for the NSWGR down the years.

I had a great-great grandmother Gatekeeper at Turanville a few miles south of Scone in 1884.

Turanville Level Crossing 2005

Another female Gatekeeper at Limbri north of Tamworth in the 1890's.

Site of Limbri Station 2005

My great grandfather worked in the yards at Werris Creek and my grandmother was a RRR girl in Sydney until she retired. There was also a ganger and earlier generations lived and worked at West Tamworth.

Werris Creek Station 2005

I have memories of watching trains from the verandah of my great grandfather's house at Wiley Park, a nice old federation home (the reason that our present home is a modern federation interpretation). Incidently, the family house is still in Dewhurst St Werris Creek in really good condition.

Cartwright house (1920/30's) - Dewhurst St Werris Creek 2005

Chris could certainly tell me about all the others but I won't bore you here. I guess I was wondering if there is a genetic effect, no not really, it was those trains from the verandah and my great grandfather taking me down to the tracks to watch the trains.

It all makes it all the more interesting when I work on and operate on Ron C's Werris Creek layout, I feel a very strong connection.

What's next?

Yesterday I picked up copies of Train Hobbies Steam Locomotive Depots - NSW Part 2 and Country Branch Lines - NSW Part 3 for Cooma, Bombala, Canberra and Captain's Flat at Berg's and a nice quiet read with a coffee will go down well.

Liverpool Exhibition

The Liverpool exhibition has came and gone again and I found it to be very inspiring. I normally go twice but this time we had to go to a wedding at Robertson on the Sunday and my daughter's birthday on the Monday, however the one visit still gave me a boost.

I arrived at about 1:45pm and left at 5:00pm having only made about one complete trip around all the exhibits due to stopping and chatting.

I also managed to take a few photos, something I usually give a miss as exhibitions are not the best for trying to take photos ( for some reason the trains keep moving). I also hate the use of perspex as it makes photographing very difficult. I had some nice shots of Time and Patience  and Central that I can't use because of the reflections of flourescents lights over the models beyond the perspex, grrrr!!!!

Here are a few shots that I like.

Ross Balderson's Central Station 1958.

Museum Station

Wallerawang

Time and Patience

Waterfall

I damaged the bank account with some book purchases but had to leave a lot of other interesting stuff behind.

All in all, a good exhibition.

Ray's 'Patented' KD Uncoupler

I have for many years been looking for a manual uncoupler for Kadees that works. I bought the Kadee version but it hardly works at all except it is better with the new scale head couplers. Another, the Rix Products version uses two magnets that are placed between the wagons either side of the couplers, unfortunately, since I am modelling NSWGR in 1965 many wagons have buffers so this uncoupler can't be used.
My first attempt at making one many years ago (20+) worked well but it was always difficult to see between the wagons.
While doing the grocery shopping a week ago I noticed a clip on LED book light and the penny dropped and here is the result.
This uncoupler really works very well, the video shows the uncoupling of various types of KD and KD clones in various combinations, The only slightly issue is with the plastic KD clones as the uncoupler occasionally catches slightly but as I intend to replace these it won't be an issue.
Incidently, the new scale head whisker variety of KDs are very good, much better than the old standard KD No.5.

Backscene 1 - Signals 0

In my last post I was about to install the new signals that Dale Richards made for me and I thought that this was the next logical step, wrong!
I realised that I neeeded to paint the backscenes along the garage doors before I could safely install the signals at the branch junction as I would have to remove the backscene panels for painting as it was too far to lean across the Bylong station section below.
Oh well, we can't always do what we want when we want to can we?
I had investigated the paints I needed to use a little while ago and these were made by Jo Sonja and could be found in craft stores (of the female persuasion) but also at Bunnings. Jo Sonja makes a range of paints called 'Background Colours' and from these I used the following, Sky Blue for distant blue hills, a mix of Sky Blue and Forest Green for shading the blue hills, Oak Moss and Forest Green for distant wooded hills, Oak Moss for distant grassy hills, then Vellum and Willow mixtures, some with a little Forest Green for closer fields.
I used my digital projector to project a suitable long panorama scene I had taken in the NSW countryside onto the backscene and then sketched in the horizon, mountains, hill lines and foreground features, etc with a 6B pencil.
After trying out my painting techniques on a small piece of previously sky painted backscene I held my breath and started earlier this week.
Here are some pictures of the result.

Now I worked out the horizon by looking at the projected picture as roughly my eye height which seems to work pretty well in the above photos but here is a 3/4 view of a train on the grade to the upper staging and it certainly doesn't work from this view, looks like you can't have it both ways which is one of life's little rules.

Also note the way that the foreshortened view causes the hills and mountains to become peaked. The only way to reduce this is to paint your hills and mountains very long horizontally if you understand what I mean.

A comparison with older photos will show that I have matched the colours of the old backscene reasonably well but without the misty effect I achieved with a can of grey primer sometime back.