Well having running trouble again. Every one of the Bmann 44 and 70 tonners do not respond to direction control and sometimes it is sporatic In the response. And when I reduce throttle the locos will sometimes change directions. The little WDTs do not have the issue so I have to assume it is the interaction between the Kato power pack and the Bmann locos that have a dual purpose decoder and run on DC or DCC. I run DC only. I am going to pull out my tech 7 and hook it up instead of the Kato. And in a few minutes after I had tinned some leads I disconnected the power pack and hooked up my tec 7 Hooked up a pair of dual mode decoder equipped 44 tonners and operation is back to normal. So sounds like a failed Kato power pack.
Second day of running with the MRC Tec 7 and I am running 9 locomotives at slow speed on the layout at once. On Monday I will contact Kato about my errant Kato power pack and see what they want to do. I have been modeling since 1970 and this marked the first time I have had an issue with a Kato product.
Thanks I have my video flood light coming tomorrow so will finally get some more light on those videos. One of the reason I tink those 9 locos are running so well is due to the Kato track power feeds. I have six of them on this small layout and will have 7 when I get around to turning that one in the proper orientation.
Called Kato today and they said send the power pack in so It is boxed and ready to go. Got the small light unit for the video cam and tried it out this afternoon. The first shot is of my small Bandai B train passenger units. And the first thing you notice is the lighting much better. Next up is my scratch built rail bus. Two axle Kato chassis for the bus and the trailer car has electrical pick wired to the bus. Has a working headlight and a working taillight on the trailer car. And the last is my Climax locomotives that I scratch built pulling some car with stone loads from the stone works. Still trying to master this camera but at least now I have enough light.
Well hope folks enjoyed the narrative as I am closing out Turtle Creek Central part three. This started out as a layout in my former location that was 6 foot by 3 foot with some impossible curvature of 8 inches and some impossible grades of 8%. Since my retirement and subsequent move to a better location the layout has been rebuilt and then gone through at least four revisions in about 4 years. The layout in its final form is two hollow core doors one 36 inches wide the other 30 inches wide and mounted on cabinet base units that give it a height of 37 inches. Maximum reach to the back track is 28 inches and 30 inches. Operating radius on the mainline is 8.5 inches with Kato unitrack. The port area operating radius is 6 and 7 inches. Operation is with a fleet of small locomotives that measure just 25 to 30 N Scale feet long and self propelled passenger cars that measure 34 N Scale feet long. The freight cars are limited to the 30 to 44 foot cars and the era is set in the 1950s. Most of the scenic work is done with just creating some more mini scenes and adding some more people and cars to the layout. The entire 2nd HC door at 30 inches wide is devoted to an extensive harbor scene probably one of the biggest in N scale and allows me to indulge in both my maritime things love and my railroad. The railroad can operate as a point to point or as a continuous run. The Turtle Creek will return again as a Part Four featuring a video tour with narration now that I have a video camera with a lighting system and then some operations later once I have mastered this video camera.
John....,,, I have enjoyed this whole build thread. Your layout looks great and works well now and you can just sit and watch trains...or do some switching> Thanks for taking us all on the journey.
I agree with George, it has been an interesting, fascinating, and at times enlightening journey. Thanks
Thank.you folks for going along on the ride. As typical I narrate my troubles and issues as I go along so maybe this can be off help to others. I finally resolved my electrical issues last night. It was a case of two many power feeds and once I eliminated the troublesome ones that were fighting with the others my power routing turnouts were back on line and the source of the trouble with the Kato power pack went away. And today I enjoyed running a Class A Climax locomotive at a extremely slow crawl around the track. Took about a minute for an 8 car train to go a foot. And I can dial it even slower. The Unitrack switchover is working out extremely well.
No it was a couple of feeder tracks track causing the issue feeding against each other. I still need to figure out how to run a separate feed off the Kato pack to feed the stock yards when the Peco switch is thrown. Throwing that switch kills the feed off the main to the yard and since it is power routing every thing above it is cut off.
John could you put in insulators on the divergent side of the turnout. Then power those tracks with feeders so that the turnout is no longer power routing past it? Sumner
The peco is already isolated from the main port feed when I throw it to access the stockyards. All of my port turnouts are power fed from the left side, except this one and it is fed from the right side because it runs toward the main part of the layout. Therefore when I throw this for the stockyards it cuts power to the main port feed but since the power feed is from the main track into the port track the stockyards remain dead and the turnout remains dead. I am going to locate a power feed in the stockyard track and wire it to my 2nd throttle. That way all my remaining port track will be live along with the stockyard track. That should enable me to run a train off the main and down into the port main past the Peco turnout. Once the power and consist is over the Peco I shut down the I simply throw the turnout coming off the main which routes all power to the main and then throw the Peco to the stockyard feed and I should have power to the remaining port track and turnouts onto the piers. I could also connect that stockyard track to an Atlas power selector and route it through that. And a third option is the bring the stockyard feed off the mainline and do away with the Peco and that connection altogether. Then I would have all my turnouts feeding the same way and is probably making the most sense. No feeder needed.
Been in the hospital for a few days with surgery on the neck, and I am back at the layout and clearing up a few loose end that I left dangling with my electrical issue. In this case a picture better explains what I did. The stockyard fed a different direction than all the other spurs and sidings so I rerouted the entrance to the stockyard and eliminated the need for a Peco turnout and a feeder track and now power is controlled by the power routing Unitrack turnouts. 100_0047-2 by John Moore posted Jan 25, 2020 at 10:47 AM This also cleared up the issue with outer port feed track and I can switch back to using my Kato power pack. I also have just enough pieces left over of unitrack to redo the ore and container pier on the ore side since the container side is already all unitrack. I am going to remove the Atlas flex track and make a nice straight run of unitrack. 100_0048-3 by John Moore posted Jan 25, 2020 at 10:47 AM
