OMG this place is
deserted!
Well, I did a lot of mrr tasks today, the results were a mixed bag.
The Good :
My steel mill yard is functioning better than it has in a long time. After I replaced that one broken turnout, I decided to take a shot at fixing a dead spot in an old Atlas turnout with point rails made of some type of white metal (aluminum? zinc? ...). So I soldered a tiny jumper wire to the problem point rail, finally got the solder to stick - and it works quite well! I test-ran a switcher over it several times, all directions, and no stalling or hesitation whatsoever. This saved me from having to buy and install a new turnout.
The Bad :
I did some testing of my command station, USB-serial adapter and laptop at Karl's house today, and the results were...
inconclusive. The PHPro worked flawlessly when it was connected to Karl's computer, so obviously
that isn't the source of the trouble. However, Karl's PHPro would NOT talk to my laptop - and it didn't work with his PC either when we used
my adapter. I wanted to try using his Keyspan adapter on my machine, but since his CD with the device drivers is a few years old, it didn't have any Windows 8-compatible drivers. So I learned that my serial adapter doesn't seem to carry a signal from any NCE command stations. At this point my only remaining option - short of buying a dedicated computer - is to order a Keyspan of my own from some faceless online vendor and
hope that it will work properly when I get it.
The Ugly :
When I got home, I attempted to re-wire the motor on that Proto2000 SW9 that was giving me fits last week. First, I broke one of the universal couplings when I pried the motor out. I also wanted to see if I could get both headlights to come on regardless of direction, but my modification to the LED wiring ended up frying the decoder. Oh well. I went ahead and soldered new wires onto the motor, tested the motor on an old MRC power pack, and it worked. I finally got the motor re-mounted in the chassis after 30 minutes' worth of fiddling. Then I went to test it again on the MRC power pack -
nothing, dead as a doornail. OK,
I surrender! I admit it - I
suck at repairing locos! I placed an online order for a brand-new one of these guys, decoder-and-sound equipped. I've exceeded my frustration limit with this unit, I don't want to do any more under-body tinkering for awhile.