Erie Varnish

As promised, here are the pics of the Erie passenger cars that just came back from paint:

 Baggage and combine

 Two coaches

Sleeper and diner, the sleeper is in factory paint and was the inspiration for the repaints

Heavyweight observation car, also in factory paint.

Unfortunately as soon as I got them assembled and put on the track I realized that they were not going to work with my locomotive, because it is in the wrong paint scheme.

I had some cars left over, so I thought I'd try my hand at repainting some myself in (as far as I know) a completely fantasy paint scheme:

 Blue and gold coach

 Blue and gold observation

Blue and gold assembled

The pictures didn't come out so well but the cars did OK. I have to find some thinner stripes for the top to better match the locomotive.

I particularly liked the eagle on the observation car:

I'm going to have to do some trimming to make it look better, but I didn't think they turned out so bad for a quickie decal job.

At any rate, the green and cream cars were fantastic, I can't wait to see what the Norfolk and Western cars will look like.

Geeps

Last Sunday one of my GP7's hit the floor. No cosmetic damage, but now it's not running right. Initially when power is applied the lights come on nice and bright, but when the loco starts moving the lights dim and it slows down to a stop. Reversing directions creates the same problem. This happens in DC or DCC.

I've had the issue before and reseating the decoder board fixed it. This time, no joy. So I ordered a decoder board from Bachmann, and while I was looking the decoder board up I found one on sale through Newegg for about the same amount as the decoder. So of course I ordered them both.

The decoder came in yesterday and I installed it this morning, but I am still having the same problem with it. I disassembled it and checked the gears, there was a bit of fuzz in the worms so I cleaned everything up and reassembled it. No joy, still the same problem.

So today the new unit is supposed to be here and the old one will go out to Bachmann for repairs.

Developments

When last we spoke of J class locomotives and DCC I had failed in my attempts to chip N&W 601, a locomotive that you may recall I had purchased in a non-running condition with wiring issues. As you may also recall I attempted to repair those wiring issues with a complete point to point rewire (using the color coded wiring from a used decoder), which I now actually believe was successful but did not work out the way I had planned.

I did order the Bachmann wiring harness, and it came in last month. I took the locomotive, the new harness, and the decoder that had been installed, uninstalled, reinstalled and once again uninstalled with me to a friends house yesterday. He has a Digitrax system connected to a laptop with JMRI software installed, which I hoped would be useful in diagnosing the problems with the install.

Using his work bench (since mine is currently in the living room until its new home can be prepared) the new wiring harness was prepared and installed. Once installed and tested the decoder installation was started once more on the PCB in the tender.

Right away I ran into the issue of finding one of the pads burned off of the PCB. Not to worry, there was still plenty of copper left on the underside of the board, which was actually better because the trace was connected on the underside anyway. To access this I pulled the board off the tender...and discovered the copper contacting strips, which were supposed to be contacting the trucks...weren't.

Not to worry once more, I tinned the truck contacts and prepped them to have the PCB wiring connected to them directly in the same manner that the PRR K4 wiring is done (which I believe to be a better arrangement even though it makes the trucks, for all intents and purposes, non-removable; in itself once again not an issue since I don't plan on having to remove the trucks for any reason, and if they do have to be removed they can be desoldered). I then installed the decoder, connected the trucks, connected the loco harness and reassembled the tender.

When the loco was placed on the programming track the Digitrax/JMRI computer was able to find the decoder right away and determine its programming parameters. The small hand held controller I had used in troubleshooting had programmed the loco with number 531, not 601, and even though I attempted to change that address with the MRC controller it obviously was not effective (which explains why the loco would not work with the MRC but would with the small handheld). Once that was fixed the loco was put on the layout...and it runs beautifully.

I ran a couple of laps on his layout but since he uses Atlas C55 track and apparently all of my cars have pizza cutter wheels I was not able to run it with a consist. It does however start and stop smoothly, it responds well to the throttle and the lights work as they are supposed to. He was amazed that such performance could be had from a Bachmann (he is one of those who judge the B-mann by their hideously inferior white box models and not by their vastly improved Spectrum line).

Since my own layout is in disarray at the moment I am unable to run it with my MRC system, but I have no reason to believe it won't perform just as well at home as it did away. And now I have two N&W J class locomotives to play with (and I can double-head them if I want to!), with a slew of cars in the paint shop to split between them.

And speaking of cars in the paint shop, the Erie cars came back yesterday as well, and they are beautiful. I need to get trucks and couplers for them, and a handful of weights as well, and then they will be ready to go on the layout. Pictures, as promised, when available. I might, however, need to get a set of the ConCor PA1/PB1 locomotives in the matching Erie paint to go with them now since the PA1 I have right now is in the blue and yellow livery instead of the green and cream (and I don't have a B unit for it).

The only sad part of the day was discovering that one of my B-mann GP7's is once again acting up,  same issue as before with the dimming lights and slowing to a stop. This time the tab bending trick didn't work, so it may be time to replace that decoder board.

And that's the news from the Path Valley Railroad.

Moving

Operations on the Path Valley Railroad have been suspended indefinitely as the corporate offices move into their new spaces.

On Friday, in the most blatant land grab in model railroading history, upper level management evicted the Path Valley Railroad from its former operating area in the closet and all railroad related items were removed in preparation for sorting and transport to their new operating area.

The new train room is 13' x 9' 8 1/2" but a 3' strip running the width of the room has to remain open for passage to the closet. All is not lost because the closet will be used to store unused materials. Work has begun to renovate the space and it is proceeding apace. Barring any unforeseen circumstances the new operating area should be completely renovated by the middle of next month and operations can once again resume.

When the bookshelves move out of the office part of that room will become a work area, so no space will be lost for that essential function, either. So, the net space will be 10' x 9' 8 1/2", which is a net gain since the space lost was half of a 13' x 10' room.

The 2' x 8' Clarinda layout will be the central operations area, but turnouts will be installed so that the track can be extended to the rest of the room. I'm thinking that T-TRAK modules will make up the bulk of the remainder, which will give me some flexibility in operations. To that end the trackwork has been taken up on the modules, which resulted in one unfortunate consequence; the extension turnouts will not fit comfortably into their assigned spaces.

One of the turnouts in question has to go in front of the passenger station (which is itself on an unprototypical curve) which means the crossing next to the station no longer fits. Since the street must exist (because I say so) that means everything has to shift down...which puts turnouts on the split between the two 2x4 modules, and this will never do. So, a redesign is in effect.

Everything gets moved down about a foot. This puts the passenger station on a straight, where it should be, and puts the module split underneath the three grade crossings beside the scrapyard. This also means that the longer turnouts that were used in front of the freight station because of where the split had to go before can go back in, which to me is a better setup anyway.

This means that, once again unfortunately, the stockyard has to go. On the one hand that's bad because now I have no reason to have a stock car and no siding to switch it into when I do have it. On the other hand, there was not a stockyard on that particular piece of track anyway. Perhaps the stock car can be put on a module somewhere instead, maybe paired up with a slaughterhouse, and the spur that is left can become the meat packing plant that actually did exist on that particular piece of track.

Now the only thing that is lacking is time.

Once Again

Today I attempted once again to chip N&W 601.

First I disconnected the tender from the locomotive. Then I carefully installed a new in the package DZ126 decoder, paying close attention to which wire went where.

Then I took the extra wiring I had clipped from the decoder during the installation and used it to repair the loco to tender wiring harness, paying careful attention to what wire went where on each end. I carefully ohmed every wire out at both of the above steps, both to ensure continuity end to end in the loco wiring harness and to ensure that neither the loco wiring harness nor the tender decoder installation had any shorts from wire to wire.

Finally I reconnected the loco and tested it in DC. It worked perfectly, the correct LEDs lit up when the loco moved in both directions and the motor stopped and started smoothly in both directions.

However, when I attempted to program the locomotive the NCE PowerCab could not find the decoder.

I tried a new in the package DZ146 decoder. No joy. I reinstalled the old suspect DZ126 decoder. Nothing. I even connected all three of the decoders (one at a time) to alligator clips and clipped them first to the programming track rails and then directly to the output wiring of the NCE, and still the system did not see any of the decoders.

I then placed a good DCC loco on the tracks and attempted to reprogram it. I had no problems at all doing so.

I have several older locomotives using Bachmann Spectrum tenders, so I installed the decoder in one of those tenders. Still no luck. Finally I uninstalled the decoder and put the DC shorting clips back in, and once again the loco runs perfectly on DC. I reinstalled the decoder and verified that yes, it still does run fine in DC.

I then attempted to run it on my little snail speed DCC controller (which used to be sold through Z Scale Track but seems to have, unfortunately, been discontinued) and was able to program the loco to run in DCC mode with that controller. However, when the loco is programmed to run with this controller it will no longer work in DC. And since the NCE couldn't find the decoder I couldn't tell what the address was on it so I was not able to run it on the NCE.

I finally disconnected the loco from the tender and was able to get the NCE to recognize the decoder about half the attempts as I rolled the tender back and forth on the programming track. I was able to put it back in dual mode and program in the address, both long and short. I reconnected the tender and once again I was able to get it to run in DC, but not in DCC.

I have no idea what's up with this locomotive. I'm hoping that installing the stock Bachmann wiring harness will fix the issues and I'll be able to chip it and get it to work. But until that happens I have removed the decoder and reinstalled the shorting clips, the loco runs fine in DC, and it will stay that way for now.

And maybe I'll just leave it that way.

Distressingly Familiar

I attempted to chip N&W J class 601 today.

The tender to loco wiring is just as bad on 601 as it was on 611.

Looks like I'll be placing an order for a new wiring harness tomorrow.

Varnish

In a previous post I mentioned an auction that I was bidding on for a set of heavyweight Norfolk and Western passenger cars to go behind the J class locos that I own. Unfortunately I was sniped at the last second so I lost out on them.

Instead I obtained a set of Con Cor unlettered heavyweight cars in green paint from a source on the N scale Yahoo group. I also purchased a set of four Model Power heavyweight coaches in Army livery (to me they look just like Lima cars but according to the N Scale Encyclopedia they have differences in some of the detailing. I have a set of the Lima cars in PRR paint but haven't closely compared them) from MB Klein. These will be stripped and painted in N&W livery instead.

I also have a full set of Con Cor smoothside passenger cars, some are already painted for the N&W and some need to be done. This will give me two full consists of cars for the two locomotives. The N&W had both types that were pulled behind the J class, mostly in mixed consists along with a handful of Pullman cars, so I'll have to get a few of them as well.

I have fifteen cars in all to deliver to the paint shop with the decals next month, hopefully I'll be getting them back before the train show season begins in earnest.