September OP SESSION CANCELLED

So why did I cancel the September Op session?

It's one of those times when you would think a modeler with 40+ years of experience in the hobby would know better.

I've been working on replacing the turnouts on the Eugene end of staging with new handlaid turnouts that are spot on spec. I'm using Central Valley ties as a sort of poor man's turnout jig.

Well ... I forgot one very important step on these 4 turnouts - I didn't check them before hand for shorts. As soon as I turned on the power, I had a short. Putting 2 and 2 together, I've put in new trackwork, and now I've got a mystery short. Great - one or more of the turnouts have a short.

My only choice is to rip out the 4 turnouts (destroying them) and redo them - THIS time checking them for shorts BEFORE installing them.

As if that isn't enough fun, now that the 4 turnouts have been removed, there's STILL a short in staging ... time to step away from the layout for a few days.

I'm not pleased at my oversight, but I'll get over it. You can bet I WILL NOT forget to check my turnouts for shorts BEFORE I lay them!

I'll be back and get to the bottom of the current mystery short - but not after I do something BESIDES working on the layout for a few days.

POSTSCRIPT: I also broke another of my rules here in my rush to get these turnouts installed: 1) Turn on layout power before starting and make sure there's no shorts. 2) Every time you install a piece of trackwork, dry fit it in place, then turn on the layout power and check again for a short. 3) If all is good, fasten the new piece of track down with caulk. This way mystery shorts don't sneak up on you - and you give yourself lots room to find issues and correct them before you've got a bunch of new trackwork fastened down and THEN find out you have a mystery short.

Wow, Joe, sorry to hear that.  I guess even you aren't immune to Murphys Law!

I had something similar happen to me, but it wasn't MRR-related.  Same general principle though: Racing the calendar, and cutting corners because I'd "done this a dozen times and knew it inside & out."  I had to upgrade and merge a few databases at work, and I wanted to get it done by a certain date.  Normally for something like this, I do a few practice runs and then write up a checklist outlining every step of the process, so I'll know exactly what to do for the live deployment.  Well this time I didn't write up the checklist, and as a result, some of the software didn't work properly.  Nothing catastrophic, merely embarassing to me [and slightly annoying to the affected users] and the malfunction was easily corrected.  But if I had only made a checklist as I had always done in the past - and followed it - this little oversight wouldn't have occurred.  I haven't made that mistake again since that time...!

Yep, Ken, even us old-timers in the hobby still make mistakes!

I wasn't really hurrying (in the sense that I was being sloppy - you can't do that with trackwork) as I was a "man with am mission" in tryiing to get these turnouts replaced in time for the next op session.

In the process, I forgot a step - a crucial step in this case. Ah well, when I make mistakes like this that totally blows the whole project, I almost never make them again because I learn my lesson!

It's been a long time since I made this serious of an oversight, however. And the fact I still have a mystery short in staging makes it even more annoying ...

It's your willingness to admit your mistakes that will help newbs like me possibly avoid the same mistakes.  Sorry to hear you are having trouble...man talk about having too many irons in the fire!  Slow down Joe. (grin)

I had once a short I was searching for a long time. Well, finally I discovered one car was moved and one wheel bridged the gap!

But of course I saw it after removing quite a few feeder strips.

Wolfgang

Y'know, Joe, if you put up overhead wire you could just solder all the ground-based trackwork solid and not have to worry about gaps . . .  I'm just sayin'

The day's coming when battery power will be practical in HO - and that day's not far off - probably a couple more years.

Just think, being able to run a loco across the table or floor with no rails! And no need to have power to the rails ... although for signalling or recharging the batteries, there might be some parts of the railroad that still have power to the rails - but dirty track problems will be a thing of the past.

I could have used it coming a little sooner this last week ...

Yes I'm waiting for the day of HO live Steam and real smoke. the only thing electric will be speed and direction control and they will be battery Powered. The really hard part will be training the Cockroaches to shovel the coal and hold the tiny red lanterns. Someday.

Dan

At least with the way you have the layout wired, you don't have to look through all that much track to try and figure out where the short is. On mine... I'd be looking at one half of the layout.

Joe, I have one of my yard/local units powered by battery.  A friend has a 1/35th scale narrow gauge layout that uses battery R/C for all of his steam engines.  So as an experiment we built this yard set for my HO layout.  The dummy unit contains rechargable lithium batteries (11.6 volts) and the receiver/speed/direction control and the other unit is the powered with the motor isolated from the frame.  Most of the parts are available for R/C cars.  Because of the weight of the batteries, I did have to add a considerable amount of weight to the powered unit so that I could pull a train.  The units run great so now I need to detail and paint the shells.  Here's a pic of the dummy unit for reference.

I get about 6 hours of operation per charge and the batteries don't have charge memory so if you have been playing with the RR and your not sure there is enough power to last for the entire session, just bring em up to a full charge and start operating.  At some point I will probably add another set or two.