Woody's mad cap idea actually works!

Back on Saturday I was talking about the issue with the Hornby DCC Sound chip and the Ringfield powered Hornby HST train. Basically, put the sound chip in and it is not capable of providing enough power to run the Ringfield motor so the HST (high Speed Train) becomes a SST - Slow Speed Train! I am no expert on electronics with two wires being about my limit of understanding! However I knew the train ran fine with a standard DCC chip. Substitute it with the sound DCC chip and it ran slow. So in my mind the obvious answer was not to re-motor it or sell it and buy a more expensive modern model. In true Woody style, which will probably make anyone who has expertise in electronics roll their eyes or shout at their screen if they read this, my mad cap idea and solution was to run the motor and light from the standard DCC chip and add a second DCC socket in parallel to plug the DCC sound DCC chip into. There was certainly room in the body of the power car even with the Ringfield motor and I had a socket in stock at the WMD HQ Stores.

Handily, on the reverse of the socket it was conveniently labeled up as to what each pin connected to making soldering the two wires from the pickups simple to the point that even I could not go too far wrong!

Having unsoldered my previous connection to the first DCC socket that I installed I then added two more wires and soon the additional socket was soldered in parallel. The standard and sound DCC chips were then plugged in.

Putting it all back into the chassis I just left it loose for the moment just in case I needed to carry out further work on this as yet untested solution.

With trepidation it was put back on the track along with the other power car and the controller was turned on. 'Guess what', as I usually say to Mrs. Woody when I have broken something! It worked just as it should do! The Ringfield motor controlled by the standard DCC chip ran the train at HST speeds whilst the DCC sound decoders in each of the power cars provided the noise. Brilliant! I will do a video of it running in a day or so just to prove it does actually work! However that will have to wait until I get the viaduct back in place which I am finishing off from when I first built it last November! More on that later in the week.

Having mentioned Mrs. W, I better add, just in case she reads this, that today I did finish cementing in the slabs that I cleaned up last week ready for the moment when, as I informed Mrs. W, the conditions were right for cement work. I never actually told her what those conditions were just so I could keep my options open! However that job is now done tidying up the slabs but highlighting I need to clear up the rubbish at the side of the house. Another job on the list!

Mr. D and the torque converter - much more interesting then my vegetational butchery!

A day at the Rocks By Rail Museum where Mr. D has had his reconditioned torque converter fitted! Now to put things into context Mr. D is not someone like the muscular Mr. T from the A Team TV series but is a small 0-4-0 loco. A torque converter is a little like an automatic gearbox in a car, just that it has one gear. 

The clean grey looking part on the left of the photo is the torque converter which is fastened to the end of the engine. You can see inside through the inspection panel that still needs to be fitted.

The ever skillful John has had a major part in refitting this part. Here though he is searching for that inspection panel referenced in the photo above. It is about somewhere - someone put it in a safe place so that it would not get lost!

Missing inspection panel apart, it should not be too long before that 'Not to be moved' sign can be taken off and the loco moved under its own power.

Meanwhile back in the Restoration shed things on Ketton No1 have moved on with Thomas and Alex making great progress on the welding and body repaint.

An interesting artifact came to the Museum today in the form of this old plan of Stewarts and Lloyds Tube Works at Corby. It dates from 1967 and shows both the enormity of the site and the complexity of the site railway system. There are plans to copy and restore the copy to a pristine condition. 

So what was I up to? Well the usual vegetational butchery on hedges and grass! I cut back so much vegetation that I discovered there is a wire fence in the overgrowth!

The mower makes a great mulcher!

Looking more like a cultivated area then a wilderness!

Like the end of most of the past days I am shattered!

A bike ride to the closed cafe!

I started yesterdays post by saying I was shattered but feeling good and ended by saying I might not be so good after my bike ride with Mr. Beecham today. Well we had our ride, about 26 miles on probably the windiest day this summer. Mr. B had promised the delights of a cycling cafe at the half way point which sounded good to me. A snack and drink would be good. Doing the sensible thing of cycling into the wind on the way out so that we would in effect get blown home we did get to the cafe having seen this interesting ex telephone box put to a new use...

...and after a slight detour to find a monument to an air crash involving a Lancaster and an Oxford aircraft. 

The monument was certainly interesting and was a poignant reminder of the lives lost during WW2. 

In the field behind the monument were some interesting creations.  Made of a wire framework covered in something that looked like camouflage netting these really stood out.

Returning to the cafe for that snack and drink......it was Monday and closed! Brilliant! There was another cyclist there who we had an interesting chat with and he told us he was 73. We said goodbye to head off to a nearby (about 7 miles away!) shop for a drink and after two miles that cyclist we had met overtook us and left us for dust! 

Anyway having got back to WMD HQ via the shop Mr. B had to shot off due to other commitments but I did get a chance to see some of his latest model creations. He certainly has been busy!

I was particularly taken by this Sd/Kfz222 which was an amazingly detailed model.

There was also this Chinese gun that caught my eye. Mr. B has a Chinese tank transporter for this to go on.

So to conclude, just like yesterday, I am shattered but feeling good!

Shattered but feeling good!

I am shattered but feeling good! Sunday, the day of rest, was far from restful for me and the other volunteers at the Rocks By Rail Museum today as we hosted and entertained a continuous stream of visitors. In fact I had to go out late morning and get more supplies for the cafe as we were selling out such were the numbers of visitors wanting refreshments! 

As I went out I took this picture of the car park and to see so many cars is a great sight!

It might be tiring but it is what all volunteers love to see and makes us all feel good. Visitors, lots of them, enjoying what we work to display and having a great time. What is even more fulfilling are the number of families who are coming to visit. 

Being so busy I did not get a chance to do my usual tour and get many photographs although I did manage to catch a ride on the last train of the day.

As a Museum we are extremely lucky to have so many younger members and todays steam engine crew was a prime example with Thomas, Ross and George providing rides all day.

Even when the Museum is open there is still work going on as Mick carries on his amazing job of repainting this Janus diesel.

Once the painting is finished the coupling rods need to be reattached to the wheels and the loco will be good to go back into service which will be a great feeling!

I may not be feeling quite so good tomorrow as I am going out on a bike ride with Mr. Beecham, he of model making skills and cycling prowess who has featured in this blog before. I am hoping he has had a weekend of intense gardening or DIY which may slow him down!

Success?

On Wednesday I finished my post regarding the Hornby Swallow Livery HST with the question as to whether it would run with the DCC chips in it. Well it did! The success of this project was something I wondered about given my track record of unsuccessful projects! However it was reassuring to see the train run with the headlights on at the right end of the train. 

I was extra pleased with the success as I had a further plan for this train. DCC sound!

I managed to find a pair of the Hornby TTS DCC sound chips for the HST train - one for each power car. Theoretically this should, given my work already on installing the 8 pin sockets in each car, be a simple plug and play job. Hmmmmm! As Mrs. Woody can vouch, the jobs which I think are going to be quick and simple have a habit of turning into something a bit bigger! Without giving too much away Mrs. W can add another example to her evidence list for jobs that grow bigger after my assurances of a speedy finish! More of that in a day or two! Stay tuned!

More vegetational butchery at the Museum!

A rocks By Rail Museum day for me with, more mowing and hedge trimming! Or, as I like to refer to my work - vegetational butchery! With all the recent hot weather you would think that the grass would not be growing much but no! In addition the mole population of the County appear to have moved into the area leaving trip hazards and creating dust storms as the mower passes over their excavations. Not nice when you get a mouthful blown up at you!

It is only when you take the mower from one end of the grass in the car park to the other and look back that you realise just how far you have to walk. Certainly gives me an apatite for lunch!

We did have quite a few visitors today including some motorcyclists out for the day and happened to drop in. They had some nice and interesting bikes.

Meanwhile in the restoration shed Thomas and Alex have finished the welding on the front of Ketton No1 and it is now in undercoat awaiting its Racing Green top coat!

Somehow we have managed to get a spare bonnet which will save repairing the original and Alex is applying the Racing Green top coat.

Rob in the meantime is applying his welding skills to the pivot points of the front loader on Harriot the JCB. Rob has skills that mean he can almost weld anything to anything including fresh air!

Round the back of the restoration shed Heather and Roger have been busy cutting back the vegetation  - yet more vegetational butchery!

I think I will have a quite day tomorrow and forget about my own vegetational butchery jobs around WMD HQ. They won't run away!

Relaxing?

It has been a busy few weeks at WMD HQ and it is catching up with me. I need to relax a bit I said To Mrs. Woody as she inspected the latest work I have done on finishing off the conservatory rebuild. Marty the cat certainly knows how to relax - maybe I should take some lessons from him?

Anyway I think Mrs. W didn't hear me but is pleased with progress! Todays work was supposed to see the slabs at the side of the conservatory cleaned up and re-bedded in fresh cement. However they were that coated in mortar the builders let drop on them whilst bricklaying they took several hours of working with a hammer and chisel to clean them up. However they are much neater and lighter in weight and the bits of mortar that remain will weather off over winter.

With the surfaces cleaned off the slabs were lifted and all the muck under them cleaned out so that there is space for cement to re-bed them  Looks a bit neater already.

Those two bags on the left contain the stuff removed from on top and under the slabs!

Back with the Hornby Swallow Livery HST I dealt with the spaghetti wiring. Getting the body off the driven power car revealed this. There are wires to the motor and the headlight from the pickups on both bogies..

This is the motor end. For some reason there is black paint on most of the wiring around the motor. In amongst the wiring is a capacitor that needs to come off. 

Disassembly saw the keeper plates for the motors removed and cleaned up and the capacitor removed.

Cutting the various wires allowed me to solder in the 8 pin socket. Basically the socket fits between the pickups taking power from the track and the wires to the motor enabling the DCC chip to take its power from the track and then run the motor in accordance with the instructions it gets from the DCC controller which in this case is controlled by me!

The 8 pin socket is wired in to the motor and headlight. The 9 volt battery is a handy way of testing things. There is enough power in it to run the motor. In this case I plugged a blanking plate into the socket which allows the motor to run on DC power and used the battery to test that the motor still ran. It did!

The wiring was tidied up and with that done it was time to plug a DCC chip in.

Meanwhile the rear un-motored power car needed a DCC chip in it to control the headlight. It was a simpler job then the motored power car as there was no motor to wire in.

There is certainly enough room for the wiring.

With all that done will it run? I feel fairly relaxed(in my mind but not body!) that it will but stay tuned to find out!