A solid weekend at Caulfield

"Any exhibitor, who at a model railway exhibition has time to indulge in photography, either has a lot of minions or a static diorama."

All went reasonably well at Caulfield over the weekend, plenty of positive praise, lots of interest in the model trams and the operation of model railways in general with wifi and smartphones. A few faces were put to online names/avatars, a catch up with others who I exhibited with a few years ago at Sunshine. All in all a good vibe.

Victoria Street, while modular, travels as well as Guinness, great at home but can be ordinary away.
The rail over bridge and associated overhead received a knock in transit, all hail Blu-tac! With a somewhat latish arrival on the Friday evening, and after some issues with missing trestle tables, the set up and initial run worked well.

I had planned to print off some side street back scenes at home only to find that the colour printer had decided to print in sepia. The scenes were printed in black and white on the monochrome laser printer for size and scale, then the colour scenes were printed after set up on Friday night at the outlaws and installed first thing Saturday morning before the doors opened.

 

The Gates with the newly installed printed back scene.

 

 

Most of the rollingstock behaved, 812 had an issue with what I believe as an overheating problem, it would run for about ten to fifteen minutes before 'failing to proceed', usually under the complex trolley wire of the bend.  800 ran ok for a while, then ran erratically then the motor died, the classic case of the lights were on but no one is home, which after five years of continuous service with a Bachmann mechanism I consider that reasonable. 870 & 964 served the entire weekend, with cameos from 460, Bendigo 29, Ballarat 28 and the Oktoberfest Duwag. As always there was the odd derailment, stalling and stuttering, just to keep it real.

 

A shout out goes to my Brother in Law, Mick, who put in several hours over the two days with Victoria Street, He managed to grab a couple of quick photos with his phone, and is the supplier of the spare wifi router. Thanks Mick.

 

 

Epsom Road.

 

 

Victoria Street.

 

 

The overview on location at Caulfield.

 

Last but not least, a big thanks goes to my wife, who lost a husband for an entire weekend and most evenings leading up to the exhibition. On the final day, she appeared with the oldest and her Ipad, before too long there was a queue of young recruit drivers all waiting for their turn to 'cut a notch' with 964.

 

 

964 negotiates the gates.

 

 

Thanks for AMRA Victorian Branch for the opportunity to exhibit, thanks for those who follow and enjoy this blog and introduced themselves.

 

 

From under the wires, but really needs to catch up with some domestic duties.

 

Glenn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



  

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