Day 158

We stayed in bed for awhile this morning surfing with the dog and cats.  We were awake early, we just didn't get up.

The day was pretty nice, cloudy but in the low 70's.  Just right.  I decided not to go anywhere.  The dog wanted to, but I thought she needed a rest.

Instead I decided to go out and work on the layout in the well house.  I wanted to wire up an experimental version of the track switch circuit to see if it worked.  I hooked it up to a random switch.  It didn't work.  The switch twitched, but it didn't throw.  I thought that there might not be enough power.  So I spent a fruitless hour trying to find the Kato specs.  Then I decided t ry another power supply.  That didn't work either.

Finally I tried another switch.  Everything worked like a champ.  Of course that meant I had to check every other switch.  They all worked.  So I had chosen the only switch out of 20 that didn't work.  Crap.

I pulled the switch and tested it again.  It worked fine.  There was a loose track nail underneath the switch.  Maybe that reduced the power of the coil enough to cause the failure.  I probably won't ever know.  I had to fix a track power connection at the switch, so pulling it had to be done anyway.  When I put it back together I cut the wrong wires.  More work.

All this showed me how I was going to wire up the switches.  So I finished up by wiring the negative capacitor leads together.  It looks nice.

I didn't feel like doing any more train work, but I didn't feel like quitting either.  So I hung the cow scull and the road runner picture in the apartment living room.  Now I can quit telling myself I need to do that every time I walk into the apartment.

Ellen went to archery in the evening.  I watched TV and surfed.