Sunday 10 August 2008

Have a break NOT a Kit Kat moment!

It's some 28 years since the original ('N' gauge) Fence Houses crew experienced the first 'Kit Kat' moment.
After a track laying session it was found we had a short circuit. Various tests failed to reveal the wiring fault, so we set about stripping out some of the sections and rewiring them.
Only after some hours did we find the cause. A foil wrapper from an earlier Kit Kat snack had been left lying on the track unnoticed!
Anything that has since happened, remotely resembling the above fiasco, has since been known as a Kit Kat moment (a bit like 'The dead penguin" story, but that's another NE group tale).

Last Thursday I had another Kit Kat moment.
Les had encouraged me to have a break from the Black five project for a few hours, and have a go at chipping my first DCC loco. We would then have something to control with my brand new Ecos ESU command station, as we'd already wired up the first few layout boards for DCC. For the test however, I thought I'd use an old short length test track I had handy.
Well the decoder was temporarily installed on the loco, with the wires left long till I was sure I'd wired it up correctly (it was my first after all).
With the loco in place on the track we turned on the power to program it. No response from the loco, nothing.
Head scratching and some humming and erring followed, but to no avail, till I looked at the terminals I had hooked the controller up to.

KIT KAT! I'd only connected them to a defunct set of screw heads that had once been used for the wires on an uncoupling magnet!
Once the wires were connected to the track terminals it actually worked!
So, 28 years on and we're still having (though more high tech) fun!

Well anyway, the 9F is now chipped and working. the first of the few, with more to follow.......... after the Black 5 gets finished that is!

Bob.

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