The Sunday shakedown and a photobomb.

In preparation for the Caulfield Exhibition, testing is currently underway. So far so good, the DCC wiring bus is working, the lighting is working, and most trams are behaving.

Most of the issues are related to details, decals and advertisements, plus some scenic items.

The JMRI and decoderpro passed with flying colours, the spare wifi router did its job, and every device was employed to have a crack at driving.

 

Seven trams on the go, from the left, two on the powercab, one each on the apple devices,

then three on the android smart phone, plus the USB interface on the right, complete madness!

 

 

 

shakedown Sunday, (this will be more presentable next weekend)

  

 

 

then Sparky decided to drop in and act as starter/inspector, he will

be at home in his cage next weekend, (he is currently going through

 that awkward teenage destructive phase and learning bad language)

 

 

From under the wires and close to the exhibition.

Glenn.

Countdown to Caulfield.

A few quick teaser shots of Victoria Street in the dark, so far so good for Caulfield.

 

Outside the Pub.

 

 

Crossing paths at the bend.

 

 

A night at the cinema.

 

 

From the ever growing punchlist under the wires.

Glenn.

 

 

 

Weekend of Birneys

 

I recently picked up a DCC ready Bachmann Birney tram off Ebay, plonked it on the rails, fired up the decoder pro and started tweaking the CV, that's right the CV, as this is fitted with a rather basic decoder, it lacks the finesse of speed tables, kick rate/depth and lighting options that I have been accustomed to. The Birney goes well, a little too well and needs to be reigned in, this will get another decoder.

The recent purchase.

Eventually this Birney will undergo some modification to left hand drive, a splash of green(or brown) and cream paint and gold decals with black shadows thus becoming X 217. This will be my second X 217 after a repaint of a right hand drive Walters white metal Birney (that surely was made from depleted uranium given its weight!) This will not be DCC chipped and will live out its days in the display cabinet, with an occasional run on the DC optioned Victoria Street.

The first X1 217 (with arse about doors)

 

 

Now whether to go green or brown????

 



 

One pole or two....

From under the wires with a rather small tram.
Glenn

P.S. the countdown to Caulfield continues........

Off to the racecourse.....at Caulfield.

There is a good reason why a fair bit of infrastructure work is going on Victoria Street at the moment. Victoria Street has been nominated and accepted to exhibit at the AMRA-Vic Branch August Exhibition, (23rd-24th August) at Caulfield Racecourse.

Doing the form.

 

So how would the layout read in a racing form guide, something like this....

 

"

VICTORIA STREET

 

A 5 year old tramway shelf layout out of Something Different (Carendt USA) & Some Bit Of Time.

 

Last Three Starts:

                             2012-Sunshine Model Railway Club Exhibition. Reconfigured Layout

                             2011-Sunshine Model Railway Club Exhibition. Extended Layout

                             2010-Sunshine Model Railway Club Exhibition. Original set up.

 

Gear Changes since last Start:

                             Fitted with NCE DCC Powercab/USB interface with JMRI Decoder Pro.

 

Form Analysis:

                             The removal of block wiring and the installation of DCC has improved the operational options of this layout, coming off a long spell (two years) from its last three runs at Sunshine, it finally gets a chance in town. Watch with interest.                                                       "

So there you go, you can wander into Caulfield with your smartphone loaded with either Wi Throttle (I phone) or Engine Driver (Android) app, say G'day and make yourself known, after which you may be invited to 'cut a notch' on Victoria Street.

In an effort to facilitate safer working for guest drivers, Perspex barriers have been install at the ends of the layout, so to prevent trams diving off and onto the floor, as momentum is sometimes a cruel mistress. Some reworking was required so the larger trams did not foul the terminus points. The Perspex was courtesy of one those gift boxed bottle of wine/dodgy port boxes.

 

 "It's like some sort of weird force field"

  

stealing millimetres, everyone counts

 

 

Those familiar with Caulfield, know that it can have some rather dim corners in the exhibition space, that is why the lighting side of Victoria Street is now a priority.

Studying the form from under wires.
Glenn




 

Happy Birthday 845

Today marks the 75th anniversary of SW5 845 entering service, the oldest tram currently still in revenue service, be it on the route 30 (Monday to Friday, Latrobe St Shuttle from Docklands to St Vincent's Plaza [City-Brunswick St]). 845 occasional fills in on City Circle duties from time to time.

 

The new and the reliable.

E 6003 & SW5 845 on Victoria Parade, East Melbourne.

(Photo courtesy of Tramsdownunder)

 

 

Something to ponder, just because it is 'experienced' does not mean it can no longer still earn its keep. 

 

 

From under the wires

Glenn

Taking a step back to go forwards.

Now that all the modules have now been rewired with the DCC bus, finer details are now being added to individual modules.

The railway station module, being the master module, from well before DCC had been fitted with lights and internal details, the challenge is to retrofit the other modules.  The Racecourse module has just had street/effect (tree) lights fitted, which is good because now I can run trams again, be it on a truncated layout.

 

The end of the line at the end of the day.
 

 

 

Victoria Street in its original profile.
 

 

 

Now I wonder if the substation can handle all of this.
 

 

 

Plug and Play

(DCC bus plugs and lighting [RCA] plugs)

The terminal strip will allow potential grounded rail/overhead running on DCC 

 

The LED lighting was starting to drive me mad, streetlights too bright, effect (tree) lights too dim, and I had enough of sampling/changing fixed value resistors for the look I was after, so I installed 1K ohm mini trimpots inline to each circuit, (yes, we now have dimmable mood lights!)  The feed into the trimpots has a 470 ohm resistor in series as safety in the event I bottom out the trimpots to zero ohms when adjusting brightness.
 

Now not to get too distracted from the other tasks.

 

From under the streetlights and the wires.

Glenn

 

 

 

 

 



Table cards and run numbers.

Now that Victoria Street has more operational flexibility since the installation of DCC, the concept of prototypical operation (timetabling) now looks more appealing, trams being by nature are a single running locomotive, running with very tight headways with others, using shared road space with other traffic and adhering to their own rules amongst themselves in regards to procedures and processes.

I spotted this online at vicsig, it involves the magic and the mayhem behind tramway operations, each tram is given a run number when in service and is operated by the driver by their instructions on a table card.

The table card is the 'job sheet' of the drivers duties for the day, time of departure, checkpoints 'en route',  meal breaks and other duties as delegated.

The run number is the schedule of work/service the tram is on, (similar to aircraft flight numbers, a designated service between point A and point B at a certain time by a certain airline), in this case the run number exists for that reason for the responsibility of the operating depot/service for that tram.

In days of yore, the run number and depot was displayed on a 'plate' that was hung on the leading near side window of the cab, mainly for the benefit of the relieving driver and/or inspector, (who would be supervising scheduling.)

 

W5 782 parked up at the siding at West Maribyrnong

(Note E21[Essendon 21] on the plate)

photo courtesy of trams downunder 

 

Now for operational reasons, I am not going to install incredibly small run numbers to my fleet, a small white/chalk board with the tram number matched to a run number. (eg 782-E21 as above) should suffice.(Did you picture model trams with post-it notes on them? I did)

 

The 'depot' that 'operates' Victoria Street is the fictitious 'Westside Depot' and for some unknown reason has the letter allocation of  'F' (go figure!). I have (with much infuriation) developed an excel spread sheet with some sort of a series of table cards that co-inside with run numbers that 'may' permit the multiple operation of services.

 

 (sample) THIS IS A WORK IN PROCESS!

 

Run No	table no	1	run	2	run	3
	101		1		3
	City (fiddleyard)down	11:36		11:00		11:30
	Railway station	11:39		11:03		11:33
	Racecourse	11:40		11:04		11:34
	Racecourse	11:46		11:10		11:40
	Railway station	11:47		11:11		11:41
	City (fiddleyard)up	****		11:14		11:44
	City (fiddleyard)down	****		11:45		12:15
	Railway station	11:55		11:48		12:18
	Racecourse	11:56		11:49		12:19
	Racecourse	12:02		11:55		12:25
	Railway station	12:03		11:56		12:26
	City (fiddleyard)up	****		11:59		12:29



 

Like all well choreographed masterpieces,(as in life and in art), this may and will turn to dust at the drop of a hat, and that's when the fun really kicks in, trying to get this all to work on a 3:1 fast clock and then trying to adjust running when 'stuff' happens.

I'm looking forward to giving it a crack.

From under the paperwork, and under the wires.
Glenn

PS. The works are continuing with the DCC bus conversion quite nicely. thanks for asking.