The diary (2006)

Or: testing, repairing and swearing...

No single project works without a fuss: here's my ‘diary' of failures, retrying, ... In short: the setbacks and how I coped with them.
This is, too, an essential part of building "Marche-en-Bières", a part the reader of this web site is entitled to know. Who knows, it might be useful for you, or merely as a comfort for your own setbacks with your own projects.

January '06: As became apparent at the end of december, january shall be mainly an electronics-month, although I plan to do some scenery, too. After all, mounting and driving about 200 feedback-Led's and as many touch-control switches on the main control panel might become boring. Moreover, I have a very full schedule at work this month. At the end of the month only the electronics got any attention from yours truly. The new web site does great: over a 1000 visitors in december, 1340 in january.

February '06: At the beginning of February, I finally managed to connect all 400 LED's on the main control panel. The 200 touch-contact switches are next, but there seemed to be a problem with the new batch of circuit boards. As I used another type of transistor, forgot to test them, mounted some anyway, they didn't seem to work properly. This is not a pleasant experience...
But there's some good news for me, too: my 7 year old computer has been replaced with a much faster one. After re-installing software and internet facilities, the PC works excellent. It gives me the opportunity - among others - to use my 3D-software again. My knowledge on the software seemed rusty, however ...
So, February isn't a great month for you, visitors to this web site. Electronic circuit boards are not attractive enough to take photo's of. The February winter blues got to me, too. I can't seem to get myself to work on the layout. Perhaps I need to do some scenery work. It helped me in the past as well...

March '06: I finally managed to restart. After a comparison test on gluing ballast, matte medium proved best. The video's are re-edited to perform better on windows media player. I've added a small live-video, too.
At the end of this month I will have a week vacation, and enough plans to fill the time. I started by putting some lights in the Boulroie platform tunnel. It became a beautiful sight, I might say. It will possibly be published in the next magazine.

April '06: The two other "Boulroie" platform tunnels are finished, I can now start building the façade. They should get the looks of the Atwerp "centers", and that just might succeed. I'm preparing to build platform shelters, doing research and making a mould for the support beams.
The article on the tunnel lights has been published, one about the tunnel catenary is sent to the publisher. I still have lots of plans, and some extra time to perform them: an ideal combination.

May '06: The boulroie tunnel façades are finsihed, and look good to me.
Meanwhile I finally started mounting SMD-resistors on some wheelsets, in order to make the current detection more reliable.

June '06: A have some vacation in the beginning of the month, and too many plans to fill them. I started resceduling the tasks, only to find out I had about 23 tasks in 5 categories ... way too much for this month. Still, long-term planning is useful. The first days were occupied with cleaning (rails, wheelsets, ...) and mounting SMD-resistors to all axles of my cars and coaches. I can now run 10 trains simultaneously.
TreeBase, a home-made database-program was debugged and put into service again. I started filling in data, but this will also be a long-term task, as I have a vast amount of magazines and books in which I must gather information. The Treebase program is downloadable, as is a sample database. For now, it's only available with a Dutch on-line manual.
To construct my home-build platform shelters, I will have to do some etching again. I would like to be able to add the photosensitive layer myself. My etching machine needed a thorough cleaning, too.

July '06: Due to the summer heat and a far too busy scedule at work, I didn't manage to do anything this month. I know you're sorry about this, but so am I.

augustus '06: This month, too, is a very calm modeling-month: too much nursing work, arthritis in my left shoulder, lots of other stuff to do, ... At the end of the month a holiday in Italy. All a managed to do was some cleaning-up and adding some more items to my treebase-databases.
Some good news, though: On august 20th, I had the 10.000th visitor on this renewed website.

september '06: After a fine holiday, I got back to work. My PC wouldn't start, and this costed me a full day to get on-line, but then I managed too update this website a bit. I have a steam-engine from a friend to repair. It's not an urgent matter. Just as well, as it's badly damaged by his kids.
A test with a photosensitive spray too produce my own brass plates for etching seems promising. I might be able to construct decent-looking platform shelters after all. At the end of the month I made a first attempt.

October '06: The first platform shelter was built, and I am pleased with the result. I used some new techniques for it (doubled-sided moulding, etching with home-prepared photosensitive brass sheets, home-made tube lights) Series production can start now... but I have to make some catenary poles first. Again, one task leads to another.
Another reader of this site asked me to put pictures of my rolling stock on-line. I decided to do this, so another 6 pages were added. They don't contain a lot of photo's for now, but there will be added more in the future.

November '06: The construction of the 'Boulroie' platform shelters continues. The double tubelights-fixtures are promising, but some isssues still need problem-solving. The construction technique for the shelters is adjusted, and a new double-sided silicon mould for the supports is drying.
I did a bargain: two second-hand metal milling machines for the price of one! I guess, in time, I can sell one of them. The accesories are scattered throughout several boxes, so some sorting has to be done. This won't be easy, as I don't know much about milling metal yet. Luckily, a friend of mine sent me a bunch of internet site adresses about milling.
At the end of the month, I wrote an article about a new tool I made: a mould-thriller. I've just it a lot, meanwhile, e.g. for making some home-cast flowerpots for the Boulroie platforms.

December '06: A first milling-test was a succes. The subject was a plaster tower, as I made before using my powerdrill. Now I would like to do some metal milling, but I haven't found a subject yet.
Meanwhile, I bought myself a second-hand laptop. As its operating system was in french, I had some severe difficulties of re-installing an english version. I succeeded at last, but not without - stupidly - corrupting the main hard drive on my desktop-PC. As my discipline in making backups is poor, I spent about the whole rest of this month retrieving lost information an re-installing software. I lost a lot of email-adresses, some articles for Modelspoormagazine I worked on, lots of photo's, ...
However, the laptop proved useful while adding lots of information in my magazine-database.
On Christmas, I got a magnificent present from one of my brothers: A painting of a series 59 diesel. For now, it sits (frameless) on a shelf in our living room.

See: diary 2005 - photo's 2006 - diary 2007