Superior & Seattle Railroad Build (Volume 3) Started 7/27/19

Started by S&S RR, July 27, 2019, 08:44:50 PM

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S&S RR

Quote from: cuse on October 01, 2019, 06:10:53 AM
When "civilians" peek in and see my layout, they say "oh, how neat" or "that's cute". When someone unexpectedly sees John's, they back out slowly as if they stumbled into a bomb factory or a secret CIA/NASA satellite tracking station ;D


Amazing stuff!


John


Thanks John. Today, I'm playing Houston we have a problem :o . Some how my frog juicer is juicing more than the frog - I spent the last hour with a continuity detector trying to figure out how that is happening. Stay tuned for further updates.
John Siekirk
Superior & Seattle Railroad

S&S RR

Update: Well I think I have solved my frog juicer problem.  I was powering the frog juicers off the main leads for my power districts.  I switched to powering them off the leads for each power block. The problem was the power was feeding back and jumping my block power switches.  If you go back a few pages you can find a diagram that shows the power districts - for phase IV I have two - districts G and I.  The power blocks are labeled 105 - 125 for Phase IV and have a I or G as the last character. I will know for sure that I have solved the problem when I have all of the frog juicers wired up and operational. I need to get into the frog juicer circuits deeper before I start with frog juicers for the first three phases of the layout.  The joys of wiring.
John Siekirk
Superior & Seattle Railroad

S&S RR

Update:  I'm adding the power drops and then hooking up each of the power blocks with suitcase connectors.  The first three went great. Then on the forth I have a short before I started adding drops - so I'm tracing wires and inspecting track. This is where wiring takes a lot of time. 
John Siekirk
Superior & Seattle Railroad

postalkarl


S&S RR

Quote from: postalkarl on October 04, 2019, 07:37:39 PM
Hey John:

Looks beautiful as always.

Karl


Karl


Thank you - about 2 PM this afternoon I was ready to tear the whole thing out looking for a short.  It turns out that the short was not in the new section of the layout but in a passenger car sitting in the Eagles Nest Yard.  I found it by working backwards to the main control panel and then shutting off switches until I isolated the power block, in this case a single siding. This is the second passenger car with the old (25 years plus) lighting systems that I have had short out the layout. At some point I will tear it apart and figure out what went wrong.  For now, they have all been removed from the layout.  I wired up two more power blocks this afternoon after wasting about 4 hours trying to figure out what was happening with the short. If I didn't have the layout broken up in to switchable power blocks It would have been days before I found this problem.
John Siekirk
Superior & Seattle Railroad

S&S RR

Update: Today, I reached the half way point on wiring all of the track power blocks. I have gone through over a hundred suitcase connectors and just had to order some more drop wire. I'm going to take a little break  and go do some fishing.  I hope to come back all ready to finish up the wiring project and get this section of the layout working.
John Siekirk
Superior & Seattle Railroad

S&S RR

Update: I just returned from a fishing trip and will be back working on the layout in the morning.  I spent a few hours in the evenings editing photographs from Frank Bakers videos from our 2016 photo shoot of George Sellios' F&SM railroad.  I will be posting these new photographs in the F&SM section of the forum. I'm really enjoying reliving our photo shoot and being inspired once again by the F&SM.
John Siekirk
Superior & Seattle Railroad

postalkarl


S&S RR

Quote from: postalkarl on October 10, 2019, 07:48:04 AM
Hey John:

Glad you found the problem.

Karl


Karl


Thank you for stopping by - a few more grey hairs but another wiring problem solved.
John Siekirk
Superior & Seattle Railroad

S&S RR

Update: The wiring of the North Yard is now complete. ;D  I'm working on the drops for the South Yard - once the South Yard is complete it will be time for testing. I'm looking forward to completing all this wiring and getting back to structure building and scenery.
John Siekirk
Superior & Seattle Railroad

S&S RR

Update: Today, was a big day on the S&S RR.  The wiring of the expansion is done!  I now start the testing phase - which will probably result in a drop or two having to be added but we can run trains in the new section. I ran a locomotive through the reversing wye before calling it quits for the day.
John Siekirk
Superior & Seattle Railroad


S&S RR

John Siekirk
Superior & Seattle Railroad

S&S RR

The Phase IV expansion - Superior Yard - got a good workout from one of our younger Engineers, yesterday.  Seeing my Grandson work the trains through the different track routings made taking the summer to build it, worth the time it took. We have a couple places that need a little work to get power to the locomotives, but we didn't have any derailments. Great test. A three year old routed the trains through the yards with the touch screen control panels.  And we learned how to read the words horn, and bell, so we knew which buttons to push.


John Siekirk
Superior & Seattle Railroad

madharry

Love it waiting for my grandson Jack to grow up to be able to control DCC..............lovely John. He is only two next month.............
Mike ;)

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