the last few days i ran a few trains around the layout. some slight tweaking in some areas and everything runs smooth now. i always amazes me how different trains react differently on some track imperfections. i setup a tanktrain consisting of 42 cars and 2 engines. ran smooth right "out of the box". later i then replaced the original plastic wheels with rapido steel ones. the train is quite a bit louder now but tracks much better. i also like the clickety-clack over rail joints
while the tank train ran around the layout i worked on an atlas sd60 which sounded like a coffee grinder. i had to take it apart multiple times until it was silent. a quick test run and i was happy with the result. i then parked the loco in the main yard. not taking care of the exact position. here's the result :
what happened ? well, the 3-axle truck was parked exactly on a booster district border. north yard was powered off due to a short. south yard was powered. so the full 8 amps of the south yard booster went thru that truck just to be shortened out. even worse, due to some glitches in my track wiring the boosters of main 3 and the engine facility happily helped the south yard booster to toast that truck. that's 3x8 amps. that's quite a bit of power. enough to melt the truck beyond repair. unfortunately also the track underneath had to be replaced.
then i spent quite a few hours crawling under the layout to find the glitches. in short : main 1, main 3, south yard, engine facility were hooked together somehow. some feeder wires were soldered to the wrong power bus. until today i found most of the issues. but currentl main 1 still messes up with main 3. sooner or later i find the culprit as well.
i also ballasted a few more feet of track. not really the kind of work i like most. but it has to be done.
weekly work report..........12/17/2023
Posted - 12/18/2023 : 18:45:30
