Puzzling Power continued

The power issues continue, more head scratching and confused looks, this is really frustrating.


After some attempts to frig a fix we still have the problem and return to first principles. After much tinkering we discover a fault, one of the point motors extra contact sets has gone rusty, resulting in poor switching. Worse than this its wired back to front, so we clean up the switch contacts and rewire the point motor. Bingo the dock side extension is now in business.






Time is now very short, with our first show approaching, so we concentrate on returning the original boards back to standard and decide to build block structures to demonstrate the principles of the new extension.

Work continues at a wild pace.. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays..

Puzzling Power and Dockside developments

Good news first..

The arrival of the dockside structure creates some excitement. It fits and looks great, shame it's 5mm taller than it was supposed to be.. Ten minutes with a saw corrects the problem and its we stand back in awe of this masterpiece.



A Foam card sandwich is cut and glued to form the base of the platform.



Now for the bad news..

We try to run our first train over the new track, mysteriously it slows and stops. After some head-scratching we decided we've got a short. Two hours later we've still got a short, but now are totally confused, time to give up and look at it with fresh eyes on another day.



Anyone seen the corner plot yet?

Wiring Complete

After what seems an eternity of soldering (which is very dull to try and describe,) we have reached a major milestone with the completion of the board and control box wiring.


Power is applied to the board and everyone waits for fizzing and popping noises….. Surely we didn’t get it right first time…!

With what looks like a major success on our hands we try a few of the turnouts, clunk, clunk, clunk and grrrrr. It was going so well but not a major problem looks like one of the seep motors is not exactly square to the track and mechanically can’t move.

It’s also noticed that the push buttons are fouling a bit on the legend sheet on the box, hmm something for next time.

Generally though good news all round.

What about the scenics, well some offsite progress here as well, we understand that the butchered Fyfes building and the new hotel / brewery corner plot are progressing well. The tension created by the expectation of the unveiling is starting to tell on some members of the group.

On other fronts the platform pier combo basic design has also been agreed and another offsite modelling project has begun.


Finally, some words of advice: If you undertake a project like this, make sure you take plenty of notes regarding the wiring and keep your information up to date. Our task was made much simpler by the excellent job done previously.