It was a beautiful day today in Indiana, Tucker and I took a break from working inside to set on the deck for a bit and soak in a little sunshine this afternoon. He played with a stick and I had a beverage. We had been down in the train room most of the day, though, another 15 feet of track is wired and set up as a detection block in JMRI.
I also worked on some corner trim on the upper valance and put up the last of the facia that was cut for it. I’ll need to make a run to Menards and replenish my supplies, another sheet of Masonite and a few lengths of 1/2″ PVC quarter round. The facia hides the LED strip lights from normal view and should help to frame the scenes. I decided to place the coal mine back in position and take a few photos with the LEDs lit.
The front LED strip is white @ 4000K just like the 2 x 4 LED panels in the room. This is a 6oo LED strip which is nice and bright. The rear LEDs are RGB to change the color, such as below, where the blue is used to simulate night time.
Next, I decided to run a train a bit, maybe pick up the loaded cars at the mine. Of course the Gremlins had to rear their ugly heads and ruin the moment! Engine #685 developed a mind of it’s own and continued down the main no matter how far I twisted the throttle knob to the contrary. I had to power down the booster to get it to stop.
The battery in the remote throttle had been low for a while and I guess it just gave up. Well, after replacing the battery and powering the layout back up, nothing…
I had to restore the decoder defaults and re-program the decoder to get it working again, but luckily, JMRI Decoder Pro made short work of this. This was the second instance with this issue for this decoder, hoping it was the low battery that caused the problem, although I’m skeptical. It all worked out OK, though. After a few maneuvers, the crew got the load picked up and #685 was on it’s way.
