BenWeiner

Can't resist adding this (same photostream) as a counterpoint. We have scans of similar photos (possibly from the same visit) taken by a club member. I'll have to check the dates again.

Plenty of diesels amongst the PLA photos on Flickr: there are more where this came from.

Along with all the other excitement during our outing to Ally Pally, your photographer did manage to capture some genuine fly shunting (non-coupled stock movement) taking place.

We got into Ally Pally this afternoon and have started putting the layout together.

Definitely a day to celebrate for the Orchard Wharf team. Allowing for many months when we were unable to work as we expected, this has taken a long time. It is now much clearer how long it takes to put together a system on this scale that uses an integrated control system. I hope the experience gained can be put to good use in future projects. Too early to say this is finished work, but the next few months will give us the opportunity to test everything out and I think we are going to find we've created something that works well and fully meets our original ambitions. Come and see us at Ally Pally next month where we expect to be up and running! Ben

That's a very good question! The convention is that to put text into a forum post you type it in directly -- and I suspect because it is technically quite complex to support it well, the very rational alternative option of dragging a text file into the box and having the system take the text out of it for you is done only rarely (for example in Google Docs). Thanks John! Ben

We had a good work session on Saturday - the time draws near when trains will run (though whether they'll complete their journeys remains to be discovered). Things still look a bit disordered; we're working underneath the boards, which we can conveniently stand on their sides, so this is a typical view: And here's some very advanced and theoretical paperwork. In this case, to work out the frog polarisation of a diamond crossing and turnout that span a board joint and thus represented a bit of a challenge during the session. Looking at it now, I think it makes just as much sense whichever way around it's turned and probably more so with the pad face down: See us at Ally Pally! We're on show as a layout under construction at London Festival of Railway Modelling this year, 16-17 March. Come and see us and find out how we're getting along! No absolute guarantee that there will be running trains, but if you are an MRC member and you want to help us run trains at the show, please contact Ben or John - orchardwharf@themrc.org.uk

Quick check shows a set of quint-arts do fit on the traverser, including the loco. These ones could do with a bit more above solebar level though. Must get that moving.

We couldn't resist a second session this weekend. Today James and I took stock of our CBus progress, as a prelude to answering my question: 'what would it take to allow us to use the control system to move the turnouts when we are fettling the high level track?' We were able to spend about three hours tracking down unfinished connections here and there with both the two centre boards connected and powered. A point of concern is that we have at least two servos that never happily settle in place. These make quite a lot of noise as they fails to settle and seem to cause the controlling CANMIO board's power regulator to get hot. So that will be our starting point next time. Meanwhile John has been reworking the storage box for the Pepper Warehouse model, a large building that conceals part of the fiddle yard at the London end of the layout. Here is a photo of the partially complete model (in its first iteration) sitting in the box. A new Pepper Warehouse will be made because this one, a pioneer for us in lasercutting, was made from greyboard and, without having the benefit of a box, it's suffered quite a few knocks. It'll be better the second time! Note, this is the back of the model. The real structure stood at the eastern end of the East India Docks close to Bow Creek (the mouth of the River Lea). John added a second floor to the building, so that its roof could hide the high level fiddleyard traverser.

Today's session was fairly brief. A review showed that the servocross modules elsewhere on the layout had almost all been done, so we looked into providing power to the high level traverser on board 1. This is directly above another traverser serving the low level. There is limited headroom and wires on the underside would be problematic. We came up with a solution. More on this when we have something to show! As all four main boards are set up I connected together some of the inter-board cables for the very first time. Left to right: DCC main bus, accessory and control power buses, CBus (the smaller connectors).

In fact, it seems that we can meet on Saturday. Have a look here: https://www.themodelrailwayclub.org/events/

@jamespetts many thanks for the supplies! Yesterday I tackled the short on board 2 high level DCC. This occupied roughly five hours! It was due to three places where copperclad sleepers were not isolated. In a couple of cases you would never have known there was a connection -- but there was! After that I connected up all the servocross modules on board 2 high level - about 1.5 hours, which given there are four allows us to estimate how long it will take to do the rest. Again a day with no visible progress but plenty of effort expended. I'm looking forward to having a larger team in the coming weeks so we can move a bit more quickly towards what I see as our next goal: running trains across the high level.

Lots of interesting rolling stock info...

Oops, missed this Port of London Authority (PLA) thread on RM Web. I'd better follow it now. https://www.rmweb.co.uk/forums/topic/167570-port-of-london-authority-pla-brake-van-liveries/ Naturally enough the content is broader than the thread title suggests. Some very good photographs in there too!

I am referring to the intermediate wiring between the bus (the output side of the DCO) and the droppers. As those are connected in using tag strip, it seems easiest to remove each from its tags until we lose the short circuit. Bad luck if it is the last one, but it should be ten minutes' work to find any and all culprits. Ben