A Quiet Night

One recent Friday I got a call during the day from Gary Laker, one of the Ramblers who was desperate to do something. Gary works to a roster and was out of sync with our meetings so I invited him over that night.

I also rang 'Rowdy' David Allen another quiet Rambler.

Well we had a most enjoyable evening running trains and adjusting the CVs on a Tsunami Alco 251 V12 decoder I had just installled in a Trainorama NSWGR 44 class. Gary had been a driver for 15 years and Rowdy had been a fireman for several so they were invaluable in determining which of the 15 diesel horns in the decoder was the closest to a 1960s 44 with dual horns. After much tooting of horns it was down to two, numbers 4 and 13. I am using the number 13 horn at the moment and it will be put to the test the next time all the Ramblers drop by.

Next we moved on to dynamic braking, the Tsunami allows the dynamix brake to be turned on with function 4 but you can also have the throttle respond accordingly by adjusting the CVs. By default the Tsunami will drop the diesel sound to idle when the dynamic brake is used but the real 44 class would go to notch 4, so notch 4 it was. This doesn't give as much change in engine noise as the default as you may only be around notch 4 when descending a grade but it's nice to know that it is happening.

In conjunction with the dynamic braking I had set the automatic notching in the Tsunami to change every 10 throttle steps, so when set in 128 mode and with a speed curve active that tops out at the 80 step mark this gives you eight notches as per the prototype. The Tsunami can also be set up for manual notching where the diesel engine sound is disconnected from the throttle and most be notched up and down by the driver, I haven't tried this yet.

The 44 was given a heavy momentum for both accelerating and decellerating for more realism.

The Tsunami allows function 11 to activate a brake that will slow down the loco, the braking effect being fully adjustable by CV for effect.

Now, I use NCE and function 11 is an awkward two handed button press and function 7 operates the brake squeal noise so I used JMRI Decoder Pro to make function 7 sound the brake squeal as well as activate the braking effect. Function 7 is also the brake squeal on locos fitted with QSI sound decoders such as Eureka and Austrains C35 so this is a good match, nothing more confusing than trying to remember which function does what and which decoder is in which loco. The JMRI DecoderPro freeware program is just the thing for setting these function button assignments easily.

With the momentum and the above adjustments the 44 took on a whole new dimension.

There may be more adjustments to make for fine tuning but I am more than happy with the way this 44 operates, two more to go.

A word of warning, the standard shrink wrapped Tsunami barely fits and one speaker must be removed to make room. For my second 44 I have bought the Atlas variant of the Tsunami, this being a flat long decoder that should replace the existing lighting board although it isn't the same shape. Maybe one day Trainorama and other manufacturers will ensure that the lighting boards in their diesels are made to the Atlas 'form factor' for ease of decoder installs, or at least for this decoder. Unfortunately this is not the case with the upcoming GMs.

One last point, I fitted a speaker enclosure for the 44 that is available from the Model Railroad Craftsman at Blacktown, NSW. This speaker enclosure need a little bit of chamfering on the inside edge to fit the existing 44 class speaker. You must have an enclosure sealing the back of the speaker as you will get little sound the way the speakers come in the 44 class without it. The speaker needs to work against entrapped air to produce the sound.

Gary Spencer-Salt, the proprietor has produced this speaker enclosure to go with his Loksound sound decoder kit specifically set up with 44 class sounds. Having seen and heard this operate in James McInerney's 44 class I can thoroughly recommend the Loksound as a far easier install than the Tsunami.

Finally, towards the end of the night Gary Laker asked if he could take a photo of his 13 class and passenger cars that has been working their way around the layout that night.

I gave him my camera that is permanently set up for model photos and a tripod. The photo above is the result of his photo and a bit of enhancement by me by dropping a real background into the photo instead of the light blue background that exists right behind the train (see below).

As you can see Gary is a fine modeller with a good eye for weathering.

BYLONG Operation Night

NOTE: Links to timetable files are to be found at the bottom of this post.

Two nights before they returned home to Texas, Blair Kooistra and Lance Lassen attended an operating night at Bylong.

Others attending were, left to right, sort of:
Bob Merchant (Senior Bob), BobLynch (Junior Bob), Blair Kooistra (at rear), Ron Cunningham (front), James McInerney (centre), Lance Lassen (at rear in orange shirt), Terry Flynn (centre), myself (front in white shirt), Layne Hardy (centre), Des McDonell (towards rear) and Gary Laker (front right). Keiran Ryan turned up later from work after the photo was taken.

Blair has been posting a day by day diary of their train chasing exploits around NSW on his Under the Weather blog (http://undertheweatherblog.blogspot.com/) since he arrived back home and I feel slack about not updating my own blog.

We had a fun night operating Bylong to timetable for the first time since it's recent changes. Everyone was given copies of the timetable and signalmen were allocated to the staging yards and each station with a 'station timetable' to control the passage of trains through their section. We did not operate with a dispatcher although I was available for advice and to troubleshoot as the night went on.

The timetable was run to a 6:1 fast clock and we started well but slowly dropped behind until we were running about a fast hour behind at one stage. I had allowed for this and the middle of the 'day' was quieter and we managed to catch up a bit of time. It later became busy but we finally ended up a bit late.

There was an Up and a Down Pickup Goods as well as an Up and Down Branch Mixed that had to shunt. Blair volunteered to be driver with James McInerney as guard, he must be a masochist!

He did say he had a great time though as he shunted with James' Trainorama 49 class fitted with a Loksound sound decoder from The Model Railroad Craftsman at Blacktown NSW. James had done a lot of adjusting of the CVs and the loco had been programmed with momentum so it was interesting to shunt with.

James also brought along a Trainorama 44 class similarly fitted and adjusted like the 49 and also an Austrains C36 with a Tsunami sound decoder that was so well programmed that it would fall almost silent and drift downhill with only the clank of the side rods to be heard. I really have to ask James exactly what CVs and values he used as my Austrains C36 is also fitted with a Tsunami.

Lance chose to drive a couple of the mainline trains during the session and said he enjoyed himself.

We had two goods trains that needed banking from Kerrabee to the Gulgong staging along with the attendant light engine workings of course.

All in all, things didn't go too badly but I certainly have a couple of things to fix before the next session.

Blair kindly offered to attend the next session..... ;-)

Here are the timetables, train control graph and forms used.

The full timetable.


Individual station timetables.


Train control graph


Modified NSWGR X2010 form used for pick ups consists including shunting instructions.

See if you can find the error in the timetable and train graph, there is a move that wasn't actually possible on the night, I stuffed up.

A Welcome to Oz

Those that follow these blogs would of course be aware that Blair Kooistra (North of Narrabri - http://northofnarrabri.blogspot.com/) and his friend Lance Lassen arrived in Sydney yesterday.

Gary Laker and I met them at Central Station and so began a day of hobby purchases as we drove around Sydney.

We ended up at my place for a welcoming BBQ with a number of friends, Bob Merchant, Bob Stack, Bob Lynch, Graham Saint, Marcus Amman, Terry Flynn and David Allen.

Other friends that couldn't be there as they were away either holidaying or at the Hobsons Bay Exhibition in Victoria were (Ron Cunningham, Ian Dunn and James McInerney).

Some time was spent talking and running a couple of trains, eating and generally having a great time.

Blair and Lance left this morning on a punishing road trip around NSW to photograph various trains being as I understand it, assisted at various times by a number of other contacts here, who I am afraid I do not know.

I am sure that Blair will give a much more detailed report on his blog when he arrives back home and recovers.

Blair and Lance, "Welcome to Australia".

Proposed Branchline Terminus

At the instigation of Dr Iain Stuart this post is being composed in Windows Live Writer and to give a small update on directions at Bylong.

In my last post I posted a photo of the layout with the new branchline and scenery. The branchline makes it's way around the room until it arrives at the previous position of the upper staging yard (above the lower staging yard).

At this point it enters the terminus of Cassilis.

Cassilis of course didn’t have a railway line but that just gives me a free hand to design the station yard.

Here is the proposed station yard as it stands at the moment.

I hope to start work on the terminus sometime in the next couple of months.

Yes Keiran, that’s where your silo will be going, the one I have been promising to buy for a while now.

Postscript: Live Writer was very easy to use and the plan could be placed right where I wanted it, although you have to have a Google Picasa Web Album account as a requirement, not a great impost.

Layout update

Just to show that I haven't been bludging here is a quick and dirty photo to show progress on the new upper level trackwork and scenery.

The main line climbs up and around behind the tree line to the upper level Gulgong storage.

That's 5085 creeping around the curve on the branch coming from the non-existent terminus.

The terminus will be above the lower staging which can be seen in a panoramic layout view in one of my early posts.

I think that the lower level backscene needs to be repainted to make the mountains rise up higher near the tunnel to better blend with the new upper level scenery.

What I am trying to achieve with the new scenery above the tunnel is the effect of a distant tree lined hill from afar but smaller trees and shrubs when up close looking at just the branch and main line.

I think it works reasonably well.

Desktop Picture Change

Yesterday I bought a 21.5" Full HD wide screen LCD monitor for my PC and realised that my desktop pictures being 4 x 3 proportions get distorted badly on a wide screen.

So I have reverted to a previous desktop picture but have added a wide screen 16 x 9 version.

Programs that show pictures seem to handle the different proportions OK but the Windows desktop does not have an option to show different proportion pictures properly.

I will do the same on the Eureka Models Blog desktop pictures that I do for Ron Cunningham.

I hope that this is of some use to you.

Back to Work

Well, I went back to work this week, what a joy!

I did however enjoy myself over the break, kit bashing my flour mill. It started as a Walthers kit for a steel merchants, I can't remember the name but you should recognise it. Anyway I had started it many years ago before the Walthers sugar mill was around, it was the most likely candidate. I had realised later that most flour mills had three or even four floors so two wouldn't do and the project stalled, I'm good at that, 3/4 finished models are my specialty.

After pondering over the problem after Christmas I realised that with a few bits of spare brick material and part of the rear wall (out of sight) I could give the mill a third floor.

I still have to build the rail unloading shed and vertical conveyor tower to the two silos but I thought I would share what I had done with you, after all, I am now 3/4's of the way through the total project.

So here it is, I'm pretty happy with it.

It has a mixture of features from several mills, double multi-pane windows, external fire escape stairs, explosion wall, bricked up windows, etc., see below.

Conquerer Flour mill - Cootamundra

Photo from http://www.filmcentralnsw.com/film_tv_nsw_home.shtml

Flour Mill at Murrumburrah

Photo from http://www.filmcentralnsw.com/film_tv_nsw_home.shtml

I cut a point into the main just west of Wollar in the area of the panorama photos of the layout that you can't see, just to the left of the camera (see earlier posts). The point is controlled by a push-pull rod to a Blue Point mechanism so this should make shunting interesting, most other points being electrically controlled.

I will post a photo of the completed mill with silos when I get it done but don't hold your breath.