Daley Train Log
Page 44
Yesterday I identified 5 main threads of activities for the near future. Two of these will occupy some of my time today. I plan to continue test runs on my various mainline routes. I will combine this with maintenance checks on the cars that I will be using.
There are a myriad of finicky details with this hobby. That is one of its attractions. While running a test train of 5 cars yesterday on a mainline route that I have called the "Transcontinental West" (the outer ring loop around the layout in a clockwise direction) I noticed that the train had to make a short S as it passed through turnouts 82 and 81. This may have contributed to the derailing of the caboose at the higher throttle speed of 15.
But if I consider the "inner" mainline track in the Jasper District to be the actual mainline then I avoid the S curve and the entire mainline is a simple loop with 22" curves on the four corners. This is what I want for my mainline high-speed runs. This also means renumbering my turnouts in the Jasper District and then reprogramming the two Digitrax DS64 stationary decoders. Fortunately this is now a trivial 5-minute task. I continue to love the ease of use of DCC (once I get the hang of it).
Here is the revised layout showing the new numbers for the turnouts.
I plan to have 5 runs with just the locomotive CN 6700, each run with the throttle set progressively higher (e.g. 5, 10, 15, 20, 25). This will give me values for determining the scale speed of the locomotive at these settings. Then I will repeat the 5 runs with a train consist of 5 cars and note the scale speeds under this condition.
My 10 runs were all successful with no derailments, even at the high throttle setting of 25 (i.e. 95 mph). The mainline oval appears to be fine when trains run west to east. The next step will be to run them in the opposite direction.
I have measured and weighed all of my operational rolling stock (74 cars) as a first step towards determining which cars should have extra weights applied. The NMRA recommends that all cars should be approximately the same average weight per unit of length in order to help minimize derailments. At the same time I have checked that my data base matches the reality of my layout.
However I still need to add a number of photos of these cars in order to bring this aspect of the records up to date. I have 115 records in the data base and 68 of these have a photo. That means that 47 cars still need to be photographed.
I learned about this web site while at the SAMRC meeting this evening:
http://members.shaw.ca/dispatcher/