Velella Velella at Rancho Del Oso Beach

Hmmmmm. What is all that stuff on the beach along the surf line?

They are Velella Velella, also known as "by-the-wind sailor".

The sail is stiff, and they have no tentacles.

"Let's go!"

V60: Some progress

Now that the motor is glued in place, I test fit the chassis and ... what the heck? That's not right! 

Hmmm, looking good on this side...

BUT! ... not here. That gap between the buffer sill and the walkway is not supposed to be there. The motor assembly is too tall and doesn't fit inside the locomotive. I double-checked the instructions and verified that I did all the metal working exactly to plan. Hmmm ...

I added a dab of paint on top of the flywheel, put the chassis on, and we immediately see the problem: The clear plastic piece conducting light from the light bulb to the upper headlight is in the way. Then I remembered hearing about that specific problem a few years ago. For now I removed the light conductor from the chassis and everything fits properly.

After installing the NEM 652 plug and the decoder it was time for a short test run on the layout.


I'm very impressed with how quiet the locomotive runs now. There seems to be some occasional binding in the original gears when running very, very slowly in speed step 1. We'll see if I can track that one down. So far, so good.

V60: Motor glued down

I really dislike working with Epoxy glue, but this stuff works. Here's another test run of the 260 417. The Maxon motor is now glued down permanently. There is sufficient (but not too much) play in the gears, so that everything runs smoothly. The flywheel on the motor is very effective. Even at medium speed the wheels rotate a couple times when I remove power abruptly.

On to installing the wiring harness with 8 pin NEM 652 plug, relay for remote uncouplers, and fitting the decoder.

Save Water!

Finally, Gov. Brown announced mandatory reductions in water usage for California, and attempts to put some teeth on enforcement as well. Instead of silly measures (water only on demand in restaurants, hotels optionally washing bed linens less often), we now have an order demanding mandatory 25% less water use compared to 2013 across the board. Reduction of water thirsty landscaping. Various elements to manage water in the delta. Various elements to speed up government drought response.

Something like this was way overdue. The actions around agricultural users seem a bit on the weak end, water use for industrial applications is not mentioned, and I wonder if the order applies to e.g. Fracking which uses lots of water as well. The comparison year 2013 is a bit disappointing, since people just need to hit the same savings as last year and will get pretty close to meeting the order. However, given that this is mandatory and tied to financial incentives, as well as penalties, it has more teeth than the voluntary reductions from last year.

I'm delighted that large campuses, golf courses, etc.  that often have lush lawns around buildings need to reduce their water use just as well, and I hope to no longer have to see pointless and wasteful irrigation on company campuses or residential areas.

This is a big step in the right direction. What took you so long, Governour?

Music at work

Private concert with Guster on the patio at work today. Great music, and an excellent way to kick off the afternoon.
Having played Portland yesterday, they'll be at a sold-out show at the Filmore tonight.

V60: Gears

Wo gearbeitet wird, fallen Spaene

The remaining gears and axles of 260 417 are cleaned and oiled. Now I just need to find some quiet time to prepare the epoxy glue and get the motor glued in place.

What a mess

They needed to bring in the big crane to clean up this derailment near Mount Marvel at Silicon Valley Lines.

V60: test-run with replacement motor

Today, I cleaned up some imperfections with the metal work from Friday and for the first time tested the new motor with the simplified drive-train.



I'm quite pleased with the result, even with the gears still dirty and a bit sticky from sitting in a box for over 25 years.

V60: The next victim

This is the ubiquitous Maerklin 3065, DB number 260 417-1 a first generation switcher for light and medium duty switching,  as well as light transfer freights. This is my next victim for conversion to digital. I'm doing this one differently than all the other conversions so far. The motor in this locomotive is awful and the gears are super-noisy. Two years ago I ordered a re-motor kit from SB Modellbau that fits this locomotive. It consists of a small Maxon DC motor, and adapter gears to fit into the Maerklin drive-train. This promises a much smoother running engine and I heard many good things about the SB Modellbau motor kits.

Before I start...

The only catch is that doing this conversion requires extensive modification of the motor block, thus the kit is labeled as "difficult" on the SB Modellbau Web site. "There is no difficult", I thought and ordered the kit.

I've never done a conversion like this before. You can send the parts to SB Modellbau to have the milling done professionally for a fee, but I wanted to try myself.

Today I worked up the courage to start grinding away the motor block with a cut-off disk in the Dremel and working out the more intricate bits with a milling bit. The zinc metal is relatively soft, so a fresh cut-off disk worked very well. The milling bit is a bit harder to control, but manageable at low speed setting. I used painters tape to keep the metal shavings away from gears and wheels as much as possible.

Halfway done.

Milling complete

The motor fits almost perfectly

So far, so good.

A couple days later I did the first test run.

Walking the Dog

One of the nice things of being up early and dropping off the kids at school is a walk with the dog along Coyote Creek Trail.

V200: Conversion to digital operation complete

The digital conversion of the V200, Maerklin model 3021 is done. Since I had the lights and decoder working already, I just needed to put shell and chassis back together.

Here is a quick run-by in Talheim with an express train made up from appropriate vintage tin plate passenger cars.


This is the last post on the V200 conversion. The earlier posts are part 1, part 2, and part 3.

V200: Lights

Since I already decided that I would rip out the analog insides of this Maerklin 3021 and put a decoder in I did not want to keep the original light package either. I do want to do the model justice and keep the outside appearance as it was manufactured in 1958, thus I'll refrain from drilling out the 3rd headlight which is merely suggested by a bit of silver paint, as much as that offends my prototype instincts.

Light-board Mark I

I built a new light-board from some strip board and DCC-friendly 14V miniature light bulbs. I used some stacked styrene bits and double-sided tape to mount the board inside the locomotive shell, carefully paying attention to leave enough room for the motor assembly right next to it.

Light-board Mk I mounted in the shell

I hooked up my workbench 12V power supply and ... was underwhelmed.

Yes, the lights look ok. In fact they are looking better than with the original light package, but if I'm going through all this trouble might as well choose something with less maintenance burden. I remembered that I still have a pack of 3mm warm-white LEDs in my supply cabinet, and built a light-board with two LEDs arranged in series, protected by a 1.5kOhm resistor. After taking the photo I glued the stack of styrene and double-sided tape to the light-board assembly and mounted it the same way as the first one.

Light-board Mark II

The light looks similar and this was a somewhat pointless exercise after all, but now the old lady has LED lights. Woot.

Time to wire up the lights with the decoder in the chassis and see how well this all works on the layout.

Visitor

"Hey look, there's a Hooded Oriole in our Lemon tree!"

I didn't know the name when I took the photo, but rather thought "that lemon is moving awfully fast"...

16 miles in 60 minutes

It was raining this morning. I had to drive to the office instead of taking the bus as usual.
It appears people are unable to refrain from having accidents when you drop a cup of water on the road.

Total drive time from south San Jose to Mountain View was over 90 minutes today.

V200: D E U T S C H E B U N D E S B A H N

The paint on the V200 Maerklin 3021 is showing signs of its age and eventful life.

This doesn't look particularly good as a close up, but the impression of the locomotive improved dramatically from merely fixing up the lettering on the side. At the moment I'm not planning to do a wholesale repaint of the body of the loco but rather leave most of the scruff marks. After all, it's almost 60 years old. It's allowed to have a few wrinkles.

[Part 1 of this conversion]

Playing with V200

This is Maerklin's 3021 model of V200 006. This model must have been produced around 1958, since Maerklin used the 200 006 number only from the introduction of the model in 1957 to 1959 (see this link for a description of the various model versions).
I've installed an Uhlenbrock 76200 multi-protocol decoder which also has cabling for driving the original Maerklin motors without turning them into a DC motor first as I usually do.

And yes, the old lady is now being tested on the Welztalbahn.

Koef II at work

I did some minor detailing, added couplers and put the Koef to work. A transfer run to Talheim was completed successfully. However, the return with only two cars barely made it up the hill. This model simply doesn't have enough traction to pull more than two cars on a 2% grade. That's ok. It's intended to perform switching duties in Emsingen only. As expected, the Koef II also does not forgive dirty rails, but performs significantly better than I expected. I might spring for a LokPilot Micro 4.0 with Powerpack if switching with this little loco is as much fun as I'm hoping for.

To finish off the conversion series of BRAWA's 0458 Koef II, here are some shots of the Koef working in Emsingen.

Koef II switching cars in Emsingen

I'm pleased to confirm that the Koef II and the work crane fit on the turntable together.

[Previous installments of the Koef II conversion: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3]

BRAWA 0458: Digitized

[This is part 3 of my Koef II digital conversion. Part 2 is here.]

Test-program the decoder

I used an ESU Lokpilot 3.0 as the decoder for the Koef. When closing the roof I noticed that the decoder just barely doesn't fit. The LokPilot Micro version would actually fit under the roof as designed. I squeezed the decoder into the cab for now. Wires be damned.

To finish off the evening, here's a short video of the Koef in Talheim.



[Read the last installment of the series here]

BRAWA 0458: Roof Off!

[This is part 2 of my Koef II digital conversion. Part 1 is here.]

The roof is off!
Instead of a screwdriver, I used a wooden clothes pin to push hard against one edge of the Koef roof and it just popped off. No damage to the roof or the body of the locomotive.

The cab housed a shrink-wrapped assembly to make the loco work with Maerklin-style AC power, and includes two capacitors wired in series to provide some extra juice for dead spots.

View into the cab with the connector leads to motor and pickups.

Read on in part 3.

Maytag MDB6701AWS dishwasher standing water in the tub

A "fun" way to spend a Sunday afternoon is figuring out why our Maytag dish washer has standing water in the tub after a completed cycle and also doesn't quite clean as well as it used to. I cleaned the floater which felt gooey and didn't really float up and down as easily as you would expect. Didn't make a difference.

The troubleshooting instructions for "standing water in tub" suggest to check the drain for food remnants. I pulled out the dishwasher from under the counter and checked the drain hose. No apparent blockage, but I noticed that it took 10s of seconds after the pump came on until the water started to flow stronger than a trickle. I figured there must be something blocking water flow inside the dishwasher...

There was, and I learned a few things:

• When your lovely wife says, "The dish washer needs a thorough cleaning", do the cleaning. It'll save you pain like an overflowing dish washer tub later.
• It is not necessary to pull the dish washer out from under the counter top in order to clean the filter and sieve.
• Contrary to earlier dishwashers we had, this Maytag model (MDB6701AWS) supposedly doesn't need manual cleaning of the sieves and filters. Of course, that's not actually true, it just takes longer until it is necessary.
• The mechanism to shred, filter and sieve food inside this dish washer is quite involved, yet fascinating.

I didn't take photos when it was dirty, but I took a couple after I had everything back together. This is the inside of the dish washer. As you can see there are no obviously serviceable parts. The floater is the round thing on the right-hand side.

I first removed the 4 screws circled in red to take off the sprayer arm and loosen the filter cover. Then unscrewed the 6 screws under the arm on the inside ring. I circled 4 of those screws in green, there are two more under the sprayer arm. The middle part now comes off fairly easily revealing a black disc, which is actually part of the pump mechanism. There is a small screw on top of the disc. Unscrew that, and put the disc aside. Finally, there are two more screws holding the filter/sieve assembly in place. Take those out, too. With some gentle convincing the cover and the filter/sieve assembly can be taken out of the dish washer. Underneath you will find the blade that hacks food into tiny parts to be washed down the drain.

In our case, the inside of the filter/sieve assembly was completely gummed up with food remnants. This part can not be opened. However, a little bit patience and using a shower head provided sufficient pressure to loosen the gunk through the sieve and wash it out. While everything was out, I cleaned the other parts, as well as the drain inside the dish washer.

Finally, I put it all back together. Apparently I didn't break anything in the process. Our dish washer seems to be working fine again. We're running an empty cycle right now to wash out any remaining gunk. So far, so good.