Wednesday September 10, 2008 6:30 am Lethbridge

It is +7 C with a high forecast of +15 C. Sunrise 7:00 Sunset 19:56 Hours of daylight: 12:56.
See current Lethbridge forecast here. See current Lethbridge news here.

This page last updated on: Thursday, September 11, 2008 8:07 AM

A. Morning Musings

It has been raining all night but is supposed to stop around noon today. This is terrible weather for the farmers! Cool and wet. They are having a difficult time getting their crops off the land.

It is also poor weather for geocaching. That leaves model trains, literature, and cooking. I have seen a recipe for a black bean chili that looks good. I will drive to the store later this morning and buy the necessary ingredients. This is good weather for such a dish. It should go well with a bottle of Lindeman's cabernet that I bought yesterday.

My model train activities took a bit of a dip yesterday. I could not figure out how to program the Digitrax DS64 stationary decoders. I also visited the meeting of the Southern Alberta Model Railway Club but was disappointed in the result. There were far fewer members than I expected and the cost of joining was about 4 times what I was expecting. I was fortunate to chat with someone I knew who answered my questions and gave me a good overview of the club's activities. I am leaning toward joining the NMRA, and possibly CARM, and depending on using online activities to meet my needs. But I am still thinking things over.

Staying with online model train activities, I found an online group within the Yahoo groups called mrc-dcc that I had joined in 2007 and posted a brief note asking if anyone was familiar with using a DS64 stationary decoder with the MRC Prodigy Wireless system. But this triggers a couple of additional ideas about finding model train forums. One is to look in the Google groups library. Another is to see if I can find one of the forums that I was using in 2007.

My weight is still 185. At least it hasn't gone up so far this month. On the other hand I was hoping to lose another 5 pounds this month. No progress on that yet.

I have a Travel Bug to keep me company at the moment. But it is anxious to continue its trip to (eventually) Scotland. I will have to place it in a geocache in the near future.

Learning Category	Planned Activities for Today	Time
Literature	Continue reading "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie	1 hr
Model Trains	Learn to program the Digitrax DS64	5 hr

B. Actual Learning Activities

7:30 am

I am making progress with re-familiarizing myself with a couple of the model train forums that I was using a year ago. I now have a query about MRC and Digitrax DS64 decoders into both the yahoo group mrc-dcc ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MRC-DCC/ )as well as The Gauge ( http://www.zealot.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=254 ). I have just joined a forum at Tony's Train Exchange ( http://tonystrains.com/forum/index.php ) and posted a message there as well.

8:20 am

I have received one reply on the Yahoo mrc-dcc forum asking for more information - that is encouraging. 8 people have viewed my message on The Gauge, but no replies yet. The Web really is amazing!

3:30 PM

Some days I put a lot of effort into an activity, and at the end of the day I have a good feeling about it, even though I may have almost nothing to show for it. Today for example.

Sometimes I am like a dog worrying a bone. I just can't let go. So it was with my problem programming the Digitrax DS64 stationary decoder. There were two main aspects to the problem. One was that the sequence of events when I was programming the module did not totally match the description in the manual. Second was the fact that when I was finished the wrong turnouts would move in response to my commands. Obviously the two aspects are related.

I asked a couple of members of the Southern Alberta Model railway Club about my problem but they were unable to offer any suggestions.

This morning I decided to try the Web Forums on model train activities. I began by trying a Yahoo Group called mrc-dcc ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MRC-DCC/ ) which is dedicated to discussion about the MRC Prodigy DCC controllers. I posted a quick message asking if anyone had tried to use a Digitrax DS64 with this system and received a quick reply asking if I had use the ID button (I had.) This was encouraging as it seemed to imply that the two systems did work together.

I also posted similar messages to The Gauge as well as The Gauge ( http://www.zealot.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=254 ) and I have just joined a forum at Tony's Train Exchange ( http://tonystrains.com/forum/index.php ) and posted a message there as well.

I have also set up three bookmarks for these three discussion forums so I can monitor the replies. A good beginning.

I then decided to go back to the basement and see if I could see any pattern or if I could try something and see what happened. I began by trying to program the DS64 using the four addresses 604, 601, 603 & 613 for the four mainline turnouts in the Jasper District. This did not work but it seemed that all four addresses defaulted to the first turnout. Weird.

After a few more similarly abortive attempts I decided to see if I could get the decoder back to the way it was at the start. I tried using the numbers 1, 2, 3 & 4 as my addresses. This worked perfectly on both accounts. The process matched perfectly the description in the manual and the four turnouts each moved as I expected. Interesting. Why did this work yet when I used the numbers 604, 601, 603 & 613 nothing worked? The Digitrax manual said that one could use any numbers between 01 and 2048.

I tried the process again, using 1, 2, 3 & 4. It worked again. But this time I noticed that the number I used also appeared on the Cab display below the information on the status of the turnout. When I tried using the 600's it didn't work, and instead of the number 604 etc. on the bottom of the screen the number 255 appeared. This was a clue. The decoder was changing all of my 600's number to 255, and it was assigning this number to turnout #1. Back to the MRC manual. Here is the key sentence: "Using 0 - 9, enter an accessory address (1 to 255)". BINGO! By pure bad luck , and not noticing this sentence, I had picked numbers that were too large for the MRC cab controller, even though they were acceptable to the DS64. Problem solved.

Now there are two alternatives.

One is to see if I can change this upper limit on the MRC cab controller using something called a configuration variable. I have never used these, but have seen many references to them in the manuals. I have sent an email to MRC to see if this is a possibility, and if it is, what are the appropriate next steps.

The second alternative is to change my numbering system for keeping track of my turnouts so that all of the numbers are less than 255. This will not be difficult, but I will wait a couple of days and see if I get a reply from MRC, or from any of the three forums that I contacted.

The bottom line is that I am back on top of the situation. And I am learning more about the characteristics of the MRC system.

6:00 PM

Dinner:

Life is good.

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