Some PM after the operating session:
Spent this morning fixing things from last night.
Batteries not charged, fully, led to some throttle problems. Low voltage was causing some throttles to not transmit to the engine (the white LED light was on the front of the throttle indicating lost transmission. I always charge the batteries the week before ops but, this time, 3 weeks earlier and they discharged during that time from the usual 10.6-12.0 to a low of in the 9's.
The newly painted Texas & Pacific 2-10-4 had a problem....
The top rod controlling the input steam into the cylinders is a little too short and it fell out of the cylinder hole. I cheated and just tied some wire to hold it in the hole. The other option is to solder an extra piece of brass on the end of the rod.
The tender coupler on the N&W A was a little low and needed adjustment.
The main lead into the passenger yard allowed 2 trains to pass before a jumper wire came loose. Tried to, mechanically, fix it with some spikes but the soldering iron had to 'come out'.
After installing 3 new passenger tracks, the new placement of the remote circuit breaker reset button wasn't very visible on the clear plastic so it was labeled.
The PRR T-1 4-4-4-4 couldn't handle all the pennsy passenger cars so 3 were removed. Since adding the double powered centipedes to the train, the 3 cars were added back into the 'mix' making a nice 14 car train.
Another just painted N&W Y-3 2-8-8-2 shorted out while on the mainline....
Took a little investigating but found that, during the decoder install, after I removed the wire to the draw bar which isn't electrically used with DCC, I left a piece of solder 'sticking out' on the nut on the opposite side of shown screw in the picture and it was contacting the engine frame and shorting out to the tender.
Was having engines stop, but not shorting at this turnout. Initially thought the road was causing the problem but, since this is the main lead into the freight yard, it gets a lot of traffic and 'gunk' filled up the frog and was lifting some tenders, especially the short tender on the yard switcher.
The B&O EM-1 2-8-8-4 was running erratic but seems fine this morning probably due to low throttle battery. Will have to test run on the mainline for verification.
The SF 2-10-10-2 wouldn't leave it's roundhouse stall but it runs great in the yard. I'm figuring the low battery in the throttle was the culprit.
This was the bulk of the problems but still have a few more things to diagnose. 40 year old layouts and lots of rolling stock and engines seem to keep me busy!
