I’ve been having an issue with the double slip on my layout. I’d wired up the Seep switching motors, and followed the leaflet that came with the point, but I had this strange issue with a short. Every time the loco I had got over the points, it’d short out. I’d hear it spark, and the controller would show an overload protection kick in.
I re-wired bits countless times, and followed along with my multimeter but couldn’t fathom it. Then I suddenly noticed what was up:
Can’t see it? No, neither could I. Took me a whole week to suss it. Basically, the curved point at the bottom is not set to turn out; i.e. the top blade is touching the top rail, making both the rails leading into it the same polarity! Because there’s insulating joiners between it and the double slip it’s all fine until the loco runs over onto the curved point. As soon as two pickup wheels are on it, there’s a short.
So once I spotted this, I flicked the point over and ‘lo and behold, it magically works! Well, the loco will run until the wheels are all on the curved point, at which point it stops dead, as there’s no power that end yet. I’ve been slowly working along, ‘debugging’ and fixing before moving onto the next bit.
I just need to add more power feeds, then wire up the point motors. Then wire in the CDU. And make the point control panel. But then it’ll be operational, and it’s on to gumming up things with glue and ballast.
I’ve been doing a little bit of wiring today. Nothing amazing, just getting some power into the rails. I’ve been around with insulating joiners, and I think I’ve got them all into the right places now. I’ve also been following up with my continuity tester, basically checking places where I think there should or shouldn’t be continuity. I found a couple of places where the opposite rail was carrying the same charge due to the electrofrog on the previous point being switched. I think I’ve got them all now though.
After working it out, I realised I needed 20 power connections! I’ve found the easiest way to accomplish this is to bare the end of a wire, and bend it to 90 degrees. Once tinned, it can be attached directly to the underside of the end of a rail, OR a metal joiner. A carefully drilled hole below it takes the wire away. The theory being that once ballasted, it’ll be unnoticeable. I did attempt to fix one to the side of the rail (a technique I know is perfectly valid) but in N gauge it’s just not do-able. In OO perhaps, but N is far too fiddly.
So far, I’ve got power into a siding. Woo! My carefully drilled hole wasn’t so careful though, and as a result the track doesn’t fit properly. I’m not worried though, as I’ll just re-drill the holes.
I’ve managed to knock quite a few random holes into the board, and I’ve decided I’ll get around those just using some sort of filler. There’s a couple of bigger holes which a piece of card would be able to bridge. I’m intending on adding a little bit of undulation to the whole base, so I’ll probably do that with a mix of filler and other fun things.
But there’s still another 18 power connections to do yet…
So, the weather has changed, and naturally, so have my plans.
I got rather fed up with the scissor crossings. The wiring was ‘fun’, but no impossible, but that wasn’t the deal breaker. The real issue was that I couldn’t get the point motors to align in a sane way. They either clashed with eachother, or with the board framework. So, I decided enough was enough, and they have now been replaced with ordinary points. The motors for those fit in fine, and the wiring issue is gone; now I just need insulating joiners to work with the electrofrogs.
The joiners ended up costing me a lot more than I planned. It seems Dapol have had a class 67 model coming for a while, and whilst looking around on the web for the joiners, I found the pre-orders for these fine new models. So I’ve got a 67 in EWS livery, and, the one I really wanted, a 67 with MK3 coaches and DVT in Wrexham and Shropshire livery! So that’s pleased me no end. Hopefully it’ll fit in the platform.
Progress overall has slowed a little, but now my issue with the scissors is gone, I can plod on far more easily. I need to solder power connectors onto some more point motors, and re-lay some of the track, but I’m not a million miles from wiring up the power. Next it’ll be onto ballast, and we’ll actually be getting somewhere.
