As for my PHP scripts, I continued working on them a little more these past few days, when my nose was not so runny as to flood my keyboard. My immune system takes bribes from viruses to let them attack me.

I made a graph to keep track of the UPS line voltage, and I noticed an interesting trend; the voltage drops a bit during the day and then increases above 120V late at night, as you can see in my pretty graph.

I will maybe set up a section of the site for these and other graphs and stuff that would be similar to the old “Railwolf Labs” site I had before.

I also set up a PHP script to monitor my router’s status and represent it graphically, like the router’s front panel, using the actual front panel icons, plus the addition of the current IP address. The script actually logs into the router’s page and grabs the information from it. It wasn’t easy to do, but I figured out how. This is how it looks:

The result was quite good, I managed to convert the old hard drive status script into an APC UPS status script. It will now be much easier to keep track of all of them during a power outage, conserve battery power, and arrange any necessary shutdowns. I can only keep track of three of them at the moment, since Apcupsd doesn’t allow monitoring more than one UPS at a time for now, and it doesn’t work with 64bit versions of Windows, either. But it’s okay, those two units that it doesn’t work with only power my network switches anyway.

First, I plugged it in to make sure it wasn’t working. Sure enough, it didn’t work any better than the last time — it was dead. So I opened it up, looking for any obvious traces that would explain its failure; burned out chips, leaking capacitors, loose parts, etc. but it all looked normal. Then it was time to test the LEDs to see if they still worked. I took a piece of wire I had lying around and shorted out some pins on the chip closest to the LEDs, and they lit up like magic. Actually, not just the LEDs –  and this is the funny part, the short made all of the switch work again, too! Just like it never died. What happened is still a mystery to me. Maybe it was “stuck” and the short reset it, I don’t know. The switch got one last chance to save itself from destruction.

Before the power outage, I received a package that contained 4 Iron Maiden CDs. Amazon.ca put them all on sale because the new album will be released in a couple of weeks. So I decided to take advantage of that. I’ll have all the Iron Maiden studio albums soon.

I finished all the track on my model train layout tonight. Now I just need to do some wiring to power those tracks, which shouldn’t take very long.  I did the soldering of terminal rail joiners tonight. I even repaired a pair that I had broken some years ago by soldering it.

As for scenery, I have one building assembled now, an auto dealership, but that will probably be the only one I’ll do. I added some lights to it, using a cheap LED light my mother gave me because it kept falling apart. It turned out to look quite good inside the building after I gutted the unit and taped the circuit board with the LEDs to the ceiling of the building with electrical tape. I run the lights using the original battery compartment. I placed it away from the building by connecting new wires to it with alligator clips. I also added a SPST switch to turn it off when I’m not using it, because the original switch is mounted on the circuit board, and it’s not convenient to reach inside the building to press it.
I will need to hide the wires that can be seen along the back wall inside the building, but it’s fine for now.

This car dealership will be just outside the town I plan to build. I have a great vision of what I would like the town to be like, but it will take a lot of time to make it come to life. It won’t be very big, but it will have a street with some shops on it, and a bank, which will be in the process of being robbed.

I went to the model train shop yesterday, and I also went to see the real thing afterward. It went pretty well. The weather was good, although it was just 21C / 71F.
I saw a train on the river bridge after I got out of the shop, and luckily, I arrived at the station before it did.
I saw more trains than last time, and actually, this one showed up just as I got into the car to head home, so I jumped out of the car to catch it.
Not only that, but the locomotives I saw are all pretty rare. StL&H is pretty much nonexistent now, for example. I doubt there are more than a couple of those locomotives around anymore, so I was lucky for sure.

After I got home, I unboxed my new freight car models, and then worked on finishing up the rail yard. I only have one track left to install, and then all the track on my layout will be finished. I will need to do some more soldering, though, since I only found one pair of terminal joiners at the shop.

I’ve been working on my model train layout quite a lot again. This time, I’ve been hunting down and eliminating all the problems.

One of those problems was that some sections of track had some dead spots. I would have solved that easily, but the hobby shop didn’t have any terminal joiners in stock for a while now. Terminal joiners are  like a regular rail joiner, but they have a wire attached to them to send power to the rails. So I decided that it was time for me to learn to solder and make my own terminal joiners. It actually went pretty well, except I was a bit sloppy with the solder. My hands are just not good for working with very small things, but I still managed to get it done. Now the soldering iron’s tip is all black. I’ll need to clean it up somehow. 

Another problem I had was that the couplers on the locomotives were not at the right height. Some couplers even got so low that they would catch on turnout points and cause derailments. So I bought some more couplers,  some special tools, and a gauge to make sure they’re set to the proper height.

There was also a section of track that caused derailments because of the radius of the curve. Apparently, I tried fitting a larger radius curve than I should have in the limited space, and it caused some parts of it to be a bit too sharp. Flex-track doesn’t always want to keep the desired shape, even when it’s nailed down, either. Replacing that track with a slightly smaller radius curve made from sectional track actually solved that problem. That’s fine, since I had a bunch of old sectional track that I wasn’t using anyway, and I got to put it to use. I also used some of those sections around the turntable, since they make it easier to line up with it than flex-track.

I’ve been working on my model train layout a lot lately. One of the things I added to it is a turntable. I got an Atlas HO scale turntable.

Now, the turntable is not bad for the price, but I have a few complaints. First of all, the turntable is a bit too small at only 9″ in diameter. Most locomotives, whether they be steam or diesel, are a bit too long to fit on it, although the smaller locomotives do fit okay, as I demonstrated in the photo. That switcher is the smallest locomotive I have, and it still takes up a good portion of the turntable. I don’t know why they don’t make a 12″ version, it surely would sell better if more people could use it. But anyway, it will do for what I need it for, I guess.

Another problem is that the base of the turntable is higher than the roadbed that is used by pretty much everyone. It’s not very much, but it still can cause some problems aligning the tracks to it. My tracks end up arriving at and angle slightly higher than the turntable rails because of it. Also the screws to mount the turntable are slotted flat head screws, a real pain to use in wood — even if you pre-drill the holes!

It would cost more to make a longer turntable, but solving the other problems would probably add no cost to it. I don’t know, but it seems to me like whomever designed this turntable never actually built a layout or even tested it on one before production.

The question for now would be how long will the site be around for now? 1 year? Another 10 years? We’ll see.