Favourite Photos...

Favourite Photos...
Reading Lines GP35 #3647

Middletown, Pa

Friday 26 July 2019

Power Pickup Issues...

Over the last week I’ve been trying to solve the issue of sporadic electrical performance on my Athearn RDG SW1500 switcher, I’ve been looking at fixes that will bypass the weak points in the wheel to truck, truck to decoder electrical path.


When looking at possible solutions one stood out to me as the most direct route from wheel/axle to the decoder. By soldering on thin/flexible decoder wire directly to the brass square bush, I now have a direct connection from the axle to the decoder, this means I have bypassed the four weak points in the Athearn design. These being the brass square bearing to bronze side frame, side frame through the rivet, rivet to brass/metal tabs & finally the plastic caps for wire to decoder.



It also means that the test SW1500 is now also “all” wheel pickup too, that’s eight wheels, grouped into pairs and directly connected to each of the four LokSound - Select decoder tabs. I’m still testing the new truck combination and what level of track/wheel cleaning is required to get the best performance.




Videos to come when I’m happy with the setup & performance...

Friday 12 July 2019

Special visitor to the layout...

Today the layout had a very special visitor drop by for a look and run on the layout. 

Kevin Lee Klettke from http://wnrr.net/ fame has been keeping in touch with me for some years now. And as luck would have it, Kevin was visiting his daughter here in Melbourne.



Kevin also met some of my operating crew, and got to have a go on the ProtoThrottle too, I think Kevin is sold on one...

It was great to have our first international visitor to the layout, and hopefully Kevin will be back again in a few years when the layout has more scenery done.

Thanks for the visit Kevin, hope you enjoyed it, and you're always welcome to drop in...

Jas...