Progress continues on the layout...
Car Dept Report:
12 cars were outfitted with low-profile wheel sets
10 cars had trip pins cut
3 cars underwent various repairs
4 cars require non-MTL low-profile wheel sets
All other cars are complete.
Clerk Dept Report:
All waybills are printed, cut and complete.
Signal Maintainer Report:
The other night crews welded the feeder wires to the rails in both Burr Oak Yard and West Davenport Yard. Upon testing, I found locomotives would traverse half the layout and then stop. There was nothing on the NCE box indicating a short. I checked my feeder wires. All seemed ok. What could it be? Finally, I gave up as I had enough for the evening.
Re-visited the situation this evening. First of all, I have determined a color blind person should not be the foreman on a cabling job. Red and dark green wires become one general dark color with poor lighting. Secondly, if a color blind foreman is the only choice, said foreman should only work during daylight hours.
So, foreman Timmy and his beautiful assistant Sarah set out to determine the source of the believed short. Assistant Foreman Sarah had plenty of ideas (and questions), but too was perplexed by the situation (daddy, why can't we run trains?). I started by cutting all the feeder wires that were soldered to the bus cable in both staging yards. Nothing. Damn! I search back and forth the full distance of the layout for anything that might be laying across the tracks creating a short. Boy is the layout dirty, but nothing that would create a short. This is quite perplexing. But wait, Assistant Foreman Sarah has found something. "Do you hear that daddy?" Hear what, I ask. "That sound? It sounds like a shhhhhhh sound." Hmm...maybe she found the source of the short (a high pitched sound). I searched up and down in the area that Sarah heard this noise (the ovalix). Maybe I had listened to the radio in the car too loud one too many times. I don't hear a thing. Assistant Foreman Sarah was called off to other duties. I continue the search. I then noticed that the test locomotive stopped just past the overpass in East Rock Island. I press on the bridge and the loco moves. The loco traveled the rest of the way to Burr Oak Yard if I held the bridge. Why would this Atlas plate girder bridge be causing a short? Why is there nothing indicating a short on the NCE system? Have I lost my mind? Quite possibly. So, I began to ponder the situation. Maybe the bridge wasn't shorting the layout, but simply blocking the flow of electrons to the layout beyond this point. But, what about the feeders I had installed to the bus in staging? Wouldn't that have provided power to the rail beyond the bridge at East Rock Island? I went to investigate the bus wire situation at Burr Oak Yard. Uh...oh! Foreman Timmy called in the problem to the CEO. Foreman Timmy failed to notice that the bus wire pulled up from the first level to the second level was not one, but two sections actually tied off. Temporarily secured the two bus wire sets. Re-attached one test set of feeder wires in Burr Oak Yard. Headlight! Tested, all is ok. Success! Foreman Timmy has been put on Administrative Leave (again) and Foreman A.T. Little has resumed leadership of the job.
Assistant Foreman Sarah inquired about the status of the layout later in the evening. I briefed her on the situation summarizing that daddy messed up. Assistant Foreman Sarah reassured me "daddy, its ok. Mistakes happen." Yes, Sarah, they do. Thank you!
Progress will continue over the weekend when lighting is better.
