The roundhouse crew received all the parts necessary to refit my ailing
FA. The former Hobbytown parts just needed a little reaming to fit the
shafts. However, just as easy it was to get that part done, a mistake
by yours truly resulted in doing a lot more work. The motor is
connected to a rubber coupling which connects to the gear tower. Since
the two shafts are different sizes I unknowingly swapped ends. This
resulted in stretching part of the coupling that shouldn't have
happened. So when the engine was test run, it didn't! The rubber shaft
was slipping. So I elected to install plastic couplings--no problem he
says! Well I ended up having to cut off some of the motor shaft and
some of the gearbox shaft to make room for those plastic parts.
So I started doing some tests on both chassis. Both worked as they
should. So I started working on the sound decoders. I have several
surplus DSX sound only decoders, but each one seemed to have different
horns, so I had to try each. Finally got two matching units. Then I
put the shells back on. They are now in testing mode with a ten car
train--so far so good. Tonight I'll run them through some different
turnouts into the yards to check for shorts and any other running
problems. Finger's crossed! I had hoped to replace a single head-lite,
mars, and numberboard bulb with individual LED's but that's going to
have to wait till the next major shopping.
On Friday night I was operating on a small Santa Fe HO scale layout not
far from me. Two operators plus the owner, who was only there to help.
This modeler hasn't set up his frogs the way most have done theirs. One
can run into a switch thrown the wrong way without shorting out. This
coupled with a "height impaired" first time engineer caused a few
derailments. However, it was a ball to operate as it generally follows
my principle of branchline running--I just have to learn a lot. This
layout is also operated with car cards, which I found confusing--again
first time with those. One great thing on this layout was his use of
homemade electro uncoupling rams. I have made my own but these are much
better and are easier to make. I'm going to have to arrange to borrow
one to copy. I'm finding out the more I operate on other's layouts the
more I can improve my layout, even at this late stage.
Bob Werre
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