The diary (2008)

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 website 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 '08: Laptop-problems are over, I now have an adequate second-hand one, with which I finished an article about home-built uncouplers, in time for publishing it in the februari issue of Modelspoormagazine.
On my mini-layout, these uncouplers are placed and connected, but my touch-button switches on the control panel aren't functioning well. This means adding some electronics and searching for errors. As I have some days off at the end of the month, things should progress. Lantern posts are the next project, and some research is done about the industry I wish to place one the layout.
More electronics: I started learning to use microcontrollers. A project one of my brothers waited for (over a year) is finaly finished with this technology. This is a new world opening up to me, I guess this knowledge will help me a lot on the larger Marche-en-Bières project.
The website needed some updating, too. Especially my newly acquired rolling stock needed a fotoshoot. The English pages needed a lot of updating, too.

February '08: I finished my uncouplers and made some lanterns, so know I can prepare constructing light sensors to help me in positioning trains right for uncoupling. The mini-layout is to be finished in october, and I must see I begin to get a bit anxious to reach this deadline.
As there is hardly any scenery built so far, I started on the industrial complex. I decide it would be a brewery complex, a quite large complex made with DPM parts. I already milled some kettels from hardwood, the building itself has its outer walls finished.
Half february, one of the modelspoorforum particpants asked me to cast metal. I never did this before, but accepted the challenge. Heat-resistant silicon moulds and low-melting metal are the ingredients I started to work with.
The mini-layout's electronics continue to cause problems, even the occupation detectors refuse to respond, and there's a short-circuit on the tracks. I managed to find some errors, but there are more to be found and fixed... even though I really wanted to start on the downhill break system.

March '08: My old, but still usable oscilloscope is now placed near the mini-layout to help me with the electronic error detection. The uncoupler position detectors are built and placed and work fine. I can now look at the control panel to see if the cars are well positioned over the uncoupler rails. I wrote an article about this for Modelspoormagazine, to appear most likely in the april issue.
Casting metal is another task, for which I meanwhile made a third mould... the first was a complete disaster, the second one not quite good enough. The result should be a combined metal-casting an etching project. The etched parts are fine, the cast ones were - in the end - too. An article on the subject was ready at the end of the month.
The thinking part of the downhill break system is done, now the practical issues are to be dealt with. I started a preliminary construction: a speed-measuring wagon, which I need to calculate the breaking system's effect. The breaking system will have one fixed part at the start of the downhille slope and two moveable parts on the level part of the fiddleyard. I will use a home-built servo system for which I found a scematic in an issue of Elektuur, a dutch magazine.
I have plenty of ideas for other projects: I'd like to come up with an original way to have the industry's chimneys smoke, I would like a moving production line inside the brewery, and the surrounding road and pavement will be built according to a former article in Modelspoormagazine. The sloped landscape will be constructed using the hard-shell method.

April '08: The mini-layout's brewery is built further. Smoke emerges from the chimneys. I did this in my own peculiar way... This method might interest readers from Modelspoormagazine, so I need to improve the building a bit faster to get nice pictures. This is why I gave the brewery a painted name: "Brasserie Montecorse". This is, once more, a little linguistic game. The name relates to both the layout (the fiddle yard hill is a "coarse mountain") and one of my favourite beers: "donk" is old-Flemish for "hill".
I couldn't wait to build the inside of my brewery, so I started with its production hall. I developed my own system to construct the interior, which I will describe later for both the magazine and this website.
April is a very busy month. I'm following a post-graduate course for my job, an essay has to be ready on the 21st. Another large project will follow the next months, and at the end of the month I'm teaching some people the etching proces at the model railroad club MTD, where I'm a member. The first days of May will be pretty well filled...

May '08: The interior of the brewery's "production hall" is ready. The "paint" I used for copper immitation is a bit special: Alclad. I'm so thrilled about it, I described it in an article for Modelspoormagazine. The little fences on the picture are etched, by the way.
I made a speed measuring car to detect rolling speeds on the fiddle yard hill, in order to fine-tune the breaking system. Other things can be measured too with this device: mean and max speed, distance, ... and of course calculated to scale. I'm sure some people might be interested in an article on this subject...
As I need to work a lot in the second half of May, the travelling time will be used to update texts for the website. Especially these English pages need a lot of translating and editing time.

June '08: Persisting is vital, they say ... anyway, after persisting I finaly got French translations of previously published artcicles. I can synchronise the articles a birt better, now. I'm talking about some 25 translated articles, so the "on-the-road"-laptop is geared into overdrive.
I've had some days off starting June, So I began making an interior for the mini-layout's brewery commercial floor. Making an interior will be an upcoming article, an electricaly driven naughty scene on this floor won't. Further plans this month: The fiddle-yards' breaking system, solving electrical problems, finishing the brewery's interior, ... June is far too short, too...

July '08: After two relaxing weeks of traveling the Greek countryside with my wife, I might be able to do some railroad modeling this month. I should do so, as I have got less then four months to finish my "contest" mini-layout. At work, a project takes a lot of my time, too. Time-management is definitely an issue, now.
The upper floor of my brewery now has an interior and - what's more - an article and a webpage about it. On the second floor, I made an animated cannery for the botlles. The engine that drives its belt also drives a naughty scene on the brewery's upper floor. For my mini-layout's downhill fiddle yard, I did some tests with a breaking system. It seems I've found a good solution. I'm waiting for some dozens of parts to start building it (and taking photo's for this website and an article in Modelspoormagazine). Furthermore, I'm making a tool to help me produce cobblestones faster.
This website itself: it's almost up-to-date. I just need some friends to do some of the last 12 or so French translations. Any volunteers?

August '08: The cobelstone streets next to the breery on my mini-layout are finsihed, thanks to a little home-made tool. It took a while to construct this helper, but it was great to use it: I didn't need to do the boring "each stone one by one" method. I'm so pleased about this little tool, I decided to describe it for Modelspoormagazine and on this website.
The downhill breaking system is being built, too. One of the tedious starter jobs was making some 500 small brass tubes. Further construction of this system will take some time, but I definitely want to finsih it by the end of the month. After all, I still have to do a lot of landscaping with home-built trees, street lanterns, some of the brewery's interior, a lot of debugging and building of the electricity system,... With just 75 days to go on the 9th of this month, I'm getting quite stressed.
At the end of the month, the breaking system is built and, except for some fine-tuning, ready to use. I've made myself a ToDo-List for the mini-layout. It holds 38 tasks in 3 categories: "nescessary", "very wishable" and "if possible". The complete automation is no part of this list. It's category would be "if a miracle happens" - I just haven't got the time for it.

september '08: With a 7-day holliday at the month's beginning, I started bulding the scenery. The landscape gets is shape, all remaining constructions (retaining walls, bridges, ...) are built and put in place, tree building has started. the ToDo-List is used intensively, although I noticed that the estimated time per task was guessed a bit too optimistic. I will definitely need all of my spare time in this and next month.
At the end of the month, I already accomplished some things. The first 15 trees are hand-made and planted. I made a website page on this subject. I must say I severely under-estimated the nescessary time to do this. Further, I'm finishing (the interior) en improving (the smoke system had a damp leak) the brewery. I still have to inspect and improve my rolling stock for the mini-layout (possibly some wheathering and carloads) but I should definitely assure that all is working well.
By the way: on september 19th, I welcomed the 50.000th visitor on this website.

October '08: The last weeks before the Mechelen exposition, and the last weeks tot get my mini-layout ready for this show. The brewery and the forest are ready, the freight cars have resistors on their axles (to get the current detection right), and got the right weight and some wheathering.
The rest of the technical part of the layout needed some inspection and repairs: The wiring under the layout still had some "loose ends", some lanterns refused to shine, the downhill breaking system is repaired, some uncouplers still need my attention, rails are cleaned, two home-built turnouts were glued due to ballasting. While trying to loosen them, I broke a soldered joint... Five days before the exposition, everything (but one of six uncoupers) worked fine.
Another problem: after getting the car's weights right (getting them heavier, that is), my downhill breaking system seemed insufficient for these heavy cars. I have two options before show-time: tilting the mini-layout a bit or adding more "gently stroking break systems". I eventually chose the last, more ellaborate option...
I still wanted to add some scenery, mostly things illustrating the downhill car movement. Some other things, mostly details, were on my wishlist, too. I managed to make working fiddleyard signaling, a fuel-and-other-liquids depository, a flower bed, some right-of-way details, the brewery/factory fence, ...
This website apparently needed some cleaning, too: it had lots of broken links and orphaned files. This is a job I mainly did while riding the train that brings me to and from my work. Putting the corrected files on-line is something I have to do at home, however.
November '08: Cleaning-up after the show was the major occupation during the first days of the month, together with work I had to do for my job: new software gave me lots of extra work to fine-tune it for reliable usage.
Apart from tidying, I'm making plans for the next steps on my major MeB-layout: storing my rolling stock and computer-communication. A computer-driven layout is the ultimate goal, but I'm taking this issue one step at a time...
I really needed a way to safely store and show my rolling stock, and to get it rolling on the layout in a handy way. There's a system on the market for doing this called "train-safe" but it is very expensive. I'm dedicated to making a better and cheaper system, and the major components are on their way. At the end of the month, I'm doing the carpenting for this. One of the preparations for this was creating a connecting track, which meant building turnouts and laying track.
About the website: october gave a visitors peak count: I expected some 2100, but it became 2734 in just one month!
This month's plans were crossed because of a sudden and great loss: my mother was found dead at her home and buried on the 15th. It's not easy to cope with this, so the rest of the month was filled with a no-brains-activity: filling my Treebase-database with the contents of magazine articles on electronics.

December '08: The showcase is getting shape, and promises to become a "special" one: Each train gets a case I can connect to the layout to allow my trains to roll on or off. I ordered (and received) clear plastic L-profiles, and got me strips of hardboard, rails, a wall-supported shelve system,... and now I'm gluing and painting the lot.
During construction and filling the first cases, I've noticed the amount of rolling stock I purchased (most of them second-hand-to-improve and kits-to-assemble-or-improve) and I'm wondering if the planned shelve length (about 40 meters) will be sufficient.
Meanwhile, at work, I still have other projects: (new software and another quality-related issue) taking a large piece of my spare time. My model-railroad-building-time-planning seems, once more, far too optimistic.
At the end of the month, I got a terrific Christmas-present from my brother, Walter: a beautiful painting of the fictional station of "Marche-en-Bières".

See: diary 2007 - photo's 2008 - diary 2009