Jul 23, 2011

Flood!

Chicago had terrible rain last night, 7" in just 4 hours or so in our area, and 8.2" in the last 24 hrs.

For the layout, it meant flooding the basement, to 2-3" deep mostly.  Our main sump failed while we bailed through the night, and then the backup also failed, but after the rain stopped (for now).  And this after finally tracking down the last of the DCC shorts I've been working on lately!  Oh well.

The layout is ok, but it'll be a huge mess to clean.  I _think_ the drywall (elevated a bit on treated footers) is OK; not sure.

Could be worse, but this is bad enough.

Jul 16, 2011

Struggling with the DCC install

So - we're back from vacation, and the DCC install on the layout is nearly complete, but the PSX breakers are detecting a short - in ALL power districts! - whenever I have both boosters powered up.

It's become very frustrating trying to find the problem.  Each booster feeds 2-4 PSXs, which in turn feed the power districts.  Given the way I've wired each town w/ independent panels, it was pretty easy to rewire such that the towns are now powered by a PSX.

There was some re-wiring to break the old buss which feed all the towns, but that's done.  The problem is that there's a connectio between the old common (rail B now) of two towns, each on different booster.  I'm guessing that's what is causing the 'short' - the boosters are talking to each other.  I already know there's no short in the trackwork itself, so there's a back-door connection between these somehow.

But, it's so frustrating to spend hours trying checking odd connections to try to isolate this.  And in the meantime, no trains of course.

Sigh.