What did you do on your layout today? (N scale)

[Kamome]

I think he advertised Kirin lager in the mid 90s. There are a wealth of odd Hollywood stars advertising things in Japan. A few years ago I seem to recall a boss coffee commercial with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Tommy Lee Jones.

[cteno4]

Yep and Sean Connery, bill Murray, and even Sammy Davis doing Suntory whisky ads!

 

 

[lighthouse]

Ah ok, i thought the movie "Lost in Translations" with Bill Murray was a fiction with Suntory! 😀

Edited August 12, 2019 by lighthouse

[cteno4]

Yep I guess was a free ad for suntory! Maybe they ended up Paying for it to actually be suntory and not a made up brand (or their competition).

 

i has foegottonen about Peter falk and orson Wells. I think we had a discussion on this like 10 years back.

 

 

jeff

[nscalestation]

On 8/11/2019 at 3:25 AM, lighthouse said:

 

 

Is it Harrison Ford in the poster? 🤔🤣

 

Yes it is.  I found that poster on the internet.  The building had a scar from some other sign that had been on it and removed so I was looking for something to cover it up.   From my own observation it would seem the most common non Japanese in advertising these days is Tommy Lee Jones for Suntory.    Since I am trying to represent the 1990's on this set of modules I am using the old Suntory Boss image near the station.   I have always thought it looked like Joe  Stalin.  Does anyone know you it really is ?

 

[Madsing]

Worked on my level crossing this weekend. It's a standard Tomix 5569, in a "difficult position". I had to cut many small styrene pieces...

[Coromant]

Hello All!

 

I remodelled my cherry trees on the T-trak, up the first version, and below the rev.2.0. I use the original trees, cut the branches a half and put Model Scene fine bushes (701-03S), after that i sprinkling with the Kato cherry blossom powder (24-371) and fixing with hair spray:

 

 

Best regards,

Coromant

[bill937ca]

Filled an odd spot on the tram layout with a piece of TGW Scenery Mat S Spring Green. It is a fabric like material. I made a cardstock pattern  before cutting the piece out.

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10383054

[Madsing]

I had some time to run trains this weekend, and I took the opportunity to record this short video

 

 

[Pauljag900]

38 minutes ago, Madsing said:

I had some time to run trains this weekend, and I took the opportunity to record this short video

 

 

That’s the quickest welding repair I ve ever seen😂😂

absoloutely superb layout mate,the night shots with all the animated lights is fantastic,well done buddy,fantastic layout👍👍😀

[serotta1972]

Wow, awesome video and layout!  Thanks for sharing.

[cteno4]

Marc,

 

really stunning! Lots of great scenes there and fantastic automation. Kudos!

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Bob_NZ]

You are setting a high standard for us to follow!  Love your attention to detail.

[NXCALE]

Having some spare time today, I made a couple of CDUs.

Both tested, both working.

 

 

[cteno4]

Nice, they are so simple to wire up and add indicators, you can even do cascades with them.

 

jeff

[katoftw]

What is a CDU?

[cteno4]

Capacitor Discharge Unit. It’s the BCD circuit talked about before on the forum. It’s basically a way to throw a single coil switch one way with the discharge of the capacitor and the other way with the back current from the charge of the capacitor. Simple and clean way to give just then right charge pulse to the coil to make  a perfect switch throw. Better than the momentary pulse sent by the usual manual switch throws.

 

jeff

[katoftw]

Thanks for the explanation.

 

Like these? https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Kato-Point-Motor-for-4-points/123788690984?hash=item1cd2618628:g:4kAAAOSwfF5c8ksh

Edited September 7, 2019 by katoftw

[cteno4]

That’s a different design that is a little more complex, but the older traditional design to have a cap to charge and fire to each direction/polarity so you need 2 caps per point and a bit more wiring.

 

the BCD circuit uses only one cap and uses the feature that you can get a reverse pulse when the cap is the reverse charging polarity so when you flip it that way you get a pulse just like the other way you get the other polarity when the cap discharges. It’s an odd thing to wrap your head around and just has to do with this odd feature of electrolytic caps in reverse polarity. This reduces the circuit down to  just a cap and a spdt switch. Uber simple and you can wire it up in a terminal strip (ie no soldering) like nx did. You can add led for direction indicators and even set up memory and cascade circuits for ladders or routes with multiple circuits. 

 

Pm me and I can send you George’s docs he would had our. He passed away a couple of years ago, but in my last communication with him he stil did not want his docs published as he wanted to publish them. He was fine with folks passing the docs around. I just honor his wishes. KVP reversed engineered the basics in this thread.

 

 

jeff

[chadbag]

Tonight I decided to clean off the "temp" layout table that has been gathering stuff.  It still needs a dusting and to run the Tomix cleaning cars (vacuum) and the centerline (wet cleaning) czr around it.

 

I also decided to wire in new feeders.  Currently the same 18-20ga wire that comes from the command station/booster/detection module goes straight to the feeder connectors, but this is too fat and causes the Unitrack to not lay flat, causing little peaks at the connections near the wire and the running issues that can cause.  I decided to try some 22ga (maybe move to 24 ga) feeders hooked to the main 18-20ga "bus".  Each detection zone has its own bus and I had one "feeder" in each section.  I decided to expand this to two feeders of the thinner wire per zone so I set about making some new feeder track connectors with the thinner wire.   I got one section done and hooked back up (and ran an EF66 to make sure that it was ok electrically -- physically mucjing about with it and the wires that were going underneath it that I have not yet replaced made the physical joint problems worse, temporarily).

 

Edited September 22, 2019 by chadbag

[Kyuhae]

I went about fully cleaning and rebuilding a Kato 2002 C11, acquired cheaply as a non-runner. Given the amount of rust and corrosion, I assume water damage was the problem.

Loco body was in good condition, just a bit dirty. On the chassis and running gear, only the eccentric rod on one side was broken, but all of the pickup points had to be cleaned.

I had a bit of trouble with the motor connection to the chassis, since there is only a tiny piece of copper that should get pinched between opposing sides of the chassis in order to get power from the pickups, but it seemed to be misaligned. I'm 99% sure there is no other way to assemble it. Seems like a strange design decision given they could have made the copper pieces longer to ensure a larger contact area. I got around the problem by bridging the chassis and copper piece with some (VERY) shoddy soldering.

 

Anyway, after a full disassembly and lots of cleaning, some oil, and running in, it works very well! (even the lights work fine!) 😀

Images show the state the chassis was in before cleaning. Rusty screws, dirty wheels...

[railsquid]

39 minutes ago, Kyuhae said:

acquired cheaply as a non-runner. 😀

 

 

 

My favourite way of acquiring trains 😉

[cteno4]

Wow now that’s a save! Looks like water sat in there for quite a while!

 

jeff

[chadbag]

 

Worked more on adding smaller diameter feeders to the main bus wires/feeders I had been using and adding an extra set of feeders into every detection zone.  Soldering to KATO unitrack connectors.

 

The goal to get the track to lay flat on the table.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 30, 2019 by chadbag

[chadbag]

No pics but I worked on redoing the feeders and adding feeders to another set of blocks of track.  Making new feeder connectors, splicing the thinner feeders to the "bus", etc.  Ran out of wire for the feeders (in the red/black I am using)  and am awaiting some more.

 

I finished one block of double track and am working on the neighbor block of double track (I have two double tracked ovals plus some single track stuff inside that -- mostly for testing DCC setups [train and track/detection/points]).