modelrail.otenko

23Nov/100

V/Line Rolling Stock

I've now realised how many photos I'm burying in the depths of my Photo Album (specifically the Australian Railways Album) and so I'm going to throw a few sets together and post them here as I find the time.

First out of the yard is a collection of V/Line Stock. V/Line are currently repainting a lot of their diesel locomotives (and their V/Locity DMUs) in 'Hi-Vis' colour-schemes; somewhat reminiscent of the 'Candy' scheme I missed out on due to my age :)

Shots from around Southern Cross Station

V/Line on the flyover near North Melbourne Station

Passing Middle Footscray

Passing Manor Loop

And other locations...

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29Oct/100

Melbourne and surrounds (October 2010)

Recently purchased a new camera (finally a DSLR!, well, actually a DSLT) and have been checking out the old haunts lately. Great timing too as we've just entered daylight savings.

Steam around Melbourne (and a trip to Seymour)

Steamrail are a Melbourne (Newport Workshops) based heritage rail operator and have quite a nice selection of rolling stock. Their R-Class Steam Locomotives are even licensed to run by themselves on the mainline...

El Zorro Freight

El Zorro is a small freight operator in Victoria who run both Standard and Broad gauge trains. Recently they have been running a grain train to and from Dynon using leased heritage engines in their original VR livery.

Queensland Rail

QR (who are about to be privatised) also run out of Dynon with large intermodal freight. They provide a nice change of scenery on the standard gauge with their LDP and G Class locomotives.

Sims St Junction (Pacific National Locomotive Depot)

At the west side of the freight are in Melbourne is Pacific National's Locomotive Provisioning Centre. Here you'll mainly see NRs getting fueled and services (with the occasional AN) and then either coupled light engine to head off to Spotswood or sent east to a rake of containers for haulage.

Melbourne-Sydney XPT

Poor old Countrylink can't win nowadays; The 'main south' from Sydney to Melbourne has been in the press nearly every day for the last few months as the ARTC bungle up the re-sleepering program (and duplication of the standard gauge.) Recently, due to their technique of sleeper replacement, the new concrete sleepers have not been seated correctly in the ballast and mudholes have resulted. This has caused some very rough riding for all trains and has even caused damage to XPT power cars and break-ups (uncoupling) of freight trains.
Seeing the XPT in Melbourne has become an unexpected treat!

81 Class shunting in Dynon

The intermodal container trains are (usually) shunted around by an 81 Class. This loco will put the empty flatbeds in the correct roads and also reconnect loaded container wagons. Sometimes this train must use the standard gauge track that leads to Southern Cross (Spencer Street) Station but it usually doesn't travel too far along. Fortunately, I was in the right place at the right time to see the 81 travel all the way down the other side of the flyover.

It also then shunts from the other end of the yard across the Dock Link Rd level crossing.

Another random sighting for this shunting maneuver was the original NRs pulling the consist half way up the flyover incline.

Track Machines

Lately there's been a lot of work down at Southern Cross Station for the addition of a new platform for the Regional Rail link debacle. This has meant track machines working during the day to lay new track or realign old lines. They return home each night via Sims St.

Middle Footscray

I tried Middle Footscray Station yesterday instead of the usual Sims St Junction and was impressed with the traffic that passed between 1800-1930.

And that's about it for now... Melbourne sightings are picking up now that daylight savings is here. It seems that early evening is the best time as well. You can can find the whole album that the above shots come from here.

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25Oct/100

Osaka, Yodogawa, Koyasan and Nishi-Akashi.

Just to finish off displaying the photos I took whilst in Japan over September, here are the highlights from the Kansai area whilst chasing trains.

Noda, Osaka

Full gallery here.
As I was staying near Noda(JR) Station on the Osaka Loop Line, I was able get an elevated view of it from the building stairwell. Fortunately, this station is located between the Ajikawaguchi branch and Umeda, so I got to see the freight pass through, as well as the express services to Kansai Airport and Wakayama.

Southern end of the Umeda Freight Terminal

The west-most track of the Umeda Freight Terminal is used as a single-track bypass of Osaka station between Nishikujo and Shinosaka. Freight trains to Ajikawaguchi and all expresses to Kansai Airport and Wakayama (and further) use this track. Note the second last photo which shows the speed limits for a variety of express trains which travel this section of track:

Noda Hanshin Station

The Hanshin Railway runs from Umeda to Kobe. It is underground from Umeda Station before climbing above ground before Noda Hanshin Station. It does this just before the Osaka Loop Line, which travels over the top.

Noda JR Station

A favourite, Noda JR Station allows you to see for quite a while towards Nishikujo along some very straight track. This provides some great shots at full zoom of the loop line trains and other expresses heading south.

Yodogawa Bridge

This bridge provides a connection east of Osaka City for freight trains from Suita to Hirano in South Osaka. There have been rumours that it will also soon get it's own passenger service. The line is currently being upgraded.

Suita Station, Osaka

I walked back to Suita Station from Yodogawa Bridge hoping to see another service pass along the line; unfortunately the scheduled trains never arrived. Either way, once at Suita there was action in every direction.

Koyasan

Full gallery here.
I travelled with a friend on the back of his motorbike up to a temple in Koyasan, but on the way we stopped at a Gusto Restaurant near Nankai Mikkaichicho Station.

Nishi-Akashi Station

After spending a night in Ako City, I took my time returning back to Osaka and stopped by Nishi-Akashi Station. This is on the main line between Kobe and Himeji and sees a lot of freight passing through. Since it is a larger station, all passenger expresses stop, but the freight trains pass... so you knew when and where to look for them. Note that the first shot is from Ako station of the local to Himeji and the second and third are from Himeji Station.

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15Oct/102

Sending full bytes over .NET Serial Ports to the Arduino

Ok, I have just spent a good two nights of my life diagnosing why I could send all bytes up to value '127' and no higher. In hindsight, it all makes perfect sense and the documentation is clear, but when you've been taught to think in strings, you might hit this very quickly.

The Scenario

I have my MAX7219 + LedControl Library set up on my Arduino and all works fine. I use two functions to control it: setLed and setRow. setLed simply takes a boolean to determine if the LED you are pointing at is to be on or off, but setRow requires a byte. This is all fairly straight-forward as each 'row' in the LED matrix has 8 LEDs, and a byte has 8 bits. So, starting from the lowest significant bit, a value of b00000001 will turn on the first LED in a specified row. (i.e. setRow(DEVICE,ROW,BITS);).

All communications between my application and the Arduino had been based on strings and so I had previously been using one character (one byte) to set one LED. Due to this being a complete waste of bandwidth, I decided that each byte I sent through the channel should be a byte to control full row of LEDs. This meant that I could therefore no longer 'see' the output as a string (or ASCII), as the characters I would create from setting the bits may no longer be in ASCII range... this was no big deal, as I could just view the byte values and decode it all myself.

So, on the client end (C#.NET Application) I started encoding the bytes from bit values. This all worked until I tried to set the last bit...

byte b = 1 | (1 < < 7); //let's set the first and last LED.
string buffer = (char)b + "\0";
serialPort.WriteLine(buffer);

Data Sent	LEDs lit	Correct?
b00000001	1st	OK
b01010101	1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th	OK
b10101010	1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th	WRONG
b10000001	1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th	WRONG
b01000000	7th	OK
b10000000	1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th	WRONG

What the hell was going on? That 8th bit is fishy!

The Answer

So, after reading numerous blogs and not finding my answer, I went to the Arduino Forums and posted a topic asking for help. I was given advice to write a very simple test app to work out where the bytes were failing... but I never did get to write that app, instead I went to the MSDN site as soon as I saw that the Write() procedure could be overloaded.

And look what I found at the article on MSDN:

By default, SerialPort uses ASCIIEncoding to encode the characters. ASCIIEncoding encodes all characters greater than 127 as (char)63 or '?'. To support additional characters in that range, set Encoding to UTF8Encoding, UTF32Encoding, or UnicodeEncoding.

And guess what... ASCII Character ? is 63 in decimal and therefore b00111111 in binary!
So, whenever I was setting the 8th bit, the .NET Framework (in all its wisdom) would translate this to a question mark as it was not expecting to send an invalid ASCII character. Ladies and Gentlemen, ASCII is only 7 bits!

The work-around?

byte[] b = new byte[] { 1, 127, 128, 129, 255 }; //let's set the first bit, last bit, etc...
serialPort.Write(b, 0, b.Length);

And then everything just worked. Do not send chars to your port if your receiver wants bytes.

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7Oct/100

Gakunan Railway

I'd heard a lot about this railway, and had seen the models released by Tomix, but wanted to see it for myself. I'd been in Tokyo overnight and decided that, although I had my RailPass, I wanted to also ride the Odakyu Express to Odawara and then commute further to Yoshiwara to ride this railway. This trip therefore also involved catching the Shinkansen.

After a quick trip on the Tokaido Line, I arrived at Yoshiwara to find a DE10 in the yard. I later realised that this was the marshalling area for the freight that then gets taken by the Gakunan railway.

I caught the next service through to Hina, as this was the best location at the time to see the most freight movements. I'd gathered this via the 2010 Japan Freight Timetable (but you can also get the timetable here.)

I was greeted at Hina by some archaic looking machines. After around 15minutes of checking out the area, the boom gates came down and then I saw 5 WAMU wagons coupled together and rolling towards me. One of the shunters was hanging on the back and one was in the middle. The guy in the middle all-of-a-sudden jumped off the consist and then jumped back on as the cars kept rolling. I then realised there was no engine attached as the shunters grabbed the handbrake on the wagons.

Before they'd dragged that rake to a hault, the engine (which may have given them a push... it was out of sight) then came through the crossing and coupled up to another rake of WAMUs.

Unfortunately, this was then the total of the freight action seen on the Gakunan Railway itself. But before I returned to Yoshiwara, I checked out the area. There's a few abandoned carriages around the station.

I then waited for the next service back to Yoshiwara. I must note that the passenger services are spaced half-hourly and they give you a good deal of time to check the area out.

Back at Yoshiwara, I checked my freight timetable and saw that there'd be a JR service arriving shortly to drop off cars for the Gakunan Railway. There were also to be other services passing, so I grabbed a bite to eat and waited.

I then returned to Osaka, taking the Tokaido Line to Shizuoka and the Shinkansen from there. You can find the complete photo album for the Gakunan Railway here.

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29Sep/100

Minoakasaka and Tomida

The Seino Railway runs from Minoakasaka to Otomesaka just west of Ogaki. JR drops off empty wagons to Minoakasaka from Ogaki and then waits for the return full freight cars. This is a very scenic area and recommended to all. Just make sure you get there when you can get a JR service between Minoakasaka and Ogaki. This is only in the early mornings or late afternoons, as around lunch there are hardly any services!

And yes, I failed miserably to stick to the timetable I had previously wanted to follow. I'd slept in and therefore got to Minoakasaka around 1100 for the 1108 JR service. It was still definitely worth the wait. Below are a few of the good shots (including some of the Yoro railway.) Note that I walked from Ogaki to Minoakasaka and I do not recommend this, it's a considerable distance.

Here's a link to the full album.

Note that once the JR engine has detached, the Seino diesel hooks and pulls away very quickly, they have no other traffic on their line and don't wait around!

I then proceeded to run back to Ogaki as I'd realised there was no JR passenger service at 1200 and there were also no visible taxis (I should've asked the station attendant!). On the way I dropped my camera battery, ruined my feet due to my sandles and missed the ~1300 Yoro Railway service. I then jumped on JR and got to Tomida to see the cement trains. If only I'd gotten up on time!!

Once in Tomida, I got to see one cement train leave and then two JR oilers pass... not as much as what the timetable would have indicated should have passed. There was a strange bogie-carrying-maintenance-car on the Kintetsu line though! I soon returned back to Osaka.

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4Sep/100

Plans to visit Private Freight Railways in Japan

I'm heading back to Japan for a wedding ~~in September~~ on Monday and have decided to seek out and photograph the private freight railways that exist around the Kansai area. From a few Google searches (and a very large thanks to the data found on this site), I've come up with the following list:

Railway Name	Year Started	Operating Area	Freight Carried
Mizushima Rinkai Railway	1943	South of Kurashiki/Okayama	Chemicals, Container
	Wikipedia: Mizushima Rinkai Railway Wikimedia: Stations of the Mizushima Rinkai Railway Kitayama Rail Pages: Mizushima Rinkai Railway
Sangi Railway	1931	West of Nagoya	Flyash, Cement and Potash
	Wikipedia: Sangi Railway Wikimedia: Sangi Railway Hisakyu @ Japan: Photos of all stations on the Sangi Railway Sangi Railway, Official Site Kitayama Rail Pages: Sangi Railway
Seino Railway	1928	Tokaido Line, near Ogaki station	Limestone
	Wikipedia: Seino Railway flickr - wamu8 : Limestone at Seino Railway Information on SL 2109, which lived at Seino Railway, but now at Oigawa Railway Fan-site: Kinshozan Line Club Fan-site: Seino Railway
Nagoya Rinkai Tetsudo	1965	South of Nagoya	Chemicals, Container and Limestone
	Wikipedia: Nagoya Rinkai Railway Kitayama Rail Pages: Nagoya Rinkai Railway Official website, via Wayback Machine Kazuhiko's travelog: Nagoya Rinkai Railway Japanese Railway Society mentions Nagoya Rinkai Railway
Kinuura Rinkai Tetsudo	1975	South of Nagoya	Container, Limestone and Potash
	Wikipedia: Kinuura Rinkai Railway Tekkadon unofficial fan-site Chita Rail Gallery - unofficial fan-site

So, after discovering all these railways, I scoured the internet for timetables... this was always going to be impossible. I then stumbled across the Railfreight Association of Japan who actually collate freight timetables and produce a single annual freight timetable of Japan. After getting a Japanese friend to talk to them, it was discovered that they did not like the idea of posting their products internationally! Fortunately my friend found a copy at Shosen Book Store in Akihabara. They sent it immediately and it arrived within 4 business days.

Note that there seems to be a monthly newsletter on their site... I haven't been able to check it out yet!

The title of the timetable is "2010 JR Kamotsu Jikokuhyou" ("2010 JR Freight Timetable", "貨物時刻表", "かもつじこくひょう") and it's valid from March 2010. It contains a thorough coverage of freight operations in Japan, starting with a Map of the country, a breakdown of services, a listing of locomotives (and the depots they belong to), a description of the types of freight, station diagrams and a lot more. The best part of this timetable is that they cover all of the private railways still operating and provide intricate timing details.

The sorting of the trains for each of the railways is a little confusing, and so I have reproduced the times of the railways above for my own benefit; but hopefully for that of others too. You'll find the timetables on my
Japan Freight Railway Timetables page.

The Daytrip

Since I now had an idea of what to see, I created a plan to visit all of these railways in one day. The only exception was the Mizushima Rinkai Railway as it is in the opposite direction from Osaka to all the others.
After a little bit of creative planning on Hyperdia (clockwise vs. counter-clockwise was a big decision) I decided on the following plan:

Depart		Arrive		Movements
Noda(JR) Osaka Shinosaka Maibara Ogaki	0535 0546 0608 0706 0743	Osaka Shinosaka Maibara Ogaki Minoakasaka	0539 0550 0643 0741 0749	0833-0914 Limestone (#1022/#5780)
Minoakasaka Ogaki Nagoya Meitetsu Nagoya Jingumae	0931 0941 1013 1018 1029	Ogaki Nagoya Meitetsu Nagoya Jingumae Oe(Aichi)	0938 1013 1017 1024 1035	All below travel through Higashiko Freight Station. This will involve loitering between Oe and Higashiko. 1034 Container (#307) 1050 No Idea (#6) 1130 Limestone (#7) 1134 Container (#308) 1140 Container (#8) 1143 Limestone (#321) 1210 No Idea (#9)
Oe(Aichi) Jingumae Meitetsu Nagoya Kintetsu Nagoya	1217 1221 1228 1241	Jingumae Meitetsu Nagoya Kintetsu Nagoya Kintetsu Tomida	1221 1228 1232 1309	1314 Tanker (#3088) 1317 Other (#0502) 1347 Cement (#5364) 1352 Tanker (#5284) 1402 Cement (#3715) 1413 Cement (#3716) 1422 Tanker (#5380) 1434 Cement (#5367)
Kintetsu Tomida	1512	Hobo	1528	1554-1609 Cement (#3718)
Hobo	1604	Oyachi	1616	1621 Cement (#3718) 1630 Cement (#3717) Walk to Tomida, watch cement shunt
Tomida Kameyama(Mie) Kamo(Kyoto) Shinimamiya	1729 1838 2006 2113	Kameyama(Mie) Kamo(Kyoto) Shinimamiya Noda	1804 1955 2100 2116	Find the Super Rail Cargo

As per usual, I've left myself no time to scratch my balls; but as per usual I will also rely on the ever-trustworthy JR.

This plan is currently to be executed on Monday the 13th of September; we'll see what happens.

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17Aug/102

Adding LEDs to a Japanese Shop

Pictures speak louder than words, so below is a quick tutorial on how to get an off-the-shelf TomyTec Japanese Shop Building lit with LED lighting. In total, this building received 6 LEDs; lantern, side-door, top floor (x2), bottom floor (x2).

Interior Lighting + Side Door

The trickiest part of this installation was the lantern that hangs out the front. I actually sliced it in half and bored out the middle to fit an LED inside. I also trimmed down the LED with a file to get it to fit a little more easily. This was done with my pocket-knife and I stopped when I felt it grinding metal. :)

Note that I borrowed ideas from this blog and I strongly recommend you check out the work the author has done on their layout!

Front Lantern

And finally, everything is wired up. You can see the huge hole I accidently drilled in the side of the shop... luckily the lantern covers it over pretty well.

Finished Product

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9Aug/106

Cheap and easy Streetlights

I'd previously bulk purchased a large amount of LEDs from LED-Switch with the intent to light up my entire model railway. I'd already bought a few of the MAX7219 ICs, which control up to 64 LEDs each, and knew how to control these via the Arduino. My article on the IC and using it was here.

Anyway, streetlights were high on the agenda, as they exist in every town in Japan and, based on a very simple idea, weren't going to be too hard to make. Following are the steps involved with creating the street lights that have been visible in my prior articles.

Ingredients

0.25mm Copper winding wire (or as thin as possible.)
1.6mm LEDs White/Yellow (as available here)
Metal tubing for the main pole. (I used '3/64 x .006' brass tubing)
Soldering iron
Paint

Construction

Firstly, cut the pole to your desired length. I have to admit here that I never once measured any of the poles and just prototyped one against a reference (in this case it was a standard Greenmax building) and then made them all the same size.

Make sure you take in to account where you will bend the pole and how much extra length will be required. Use a file to smoothen out the ends so that you don't damage the winding wire when fed through.

Once you have the poles made, simply cut the leads of the LED right down and solder one end to the pole itself. Finally, if you haven't already, feed the wire through the pole and tin one end (melt it with a little bit of solder to strip away the insulation.) Once done, trim away any excess tinned lead and then solder it to the other lead of the LED.

Note that the final version there was the best I'd made. I'd trimmed the LEDs right down after folding one leg over the top and used a very small amount of solder.

Finished Product

Better night shots of the taller version in action...

The only thing these really require now is some form of cover/compartment/housing for the bulb to live in. Currently, with a big enough blob of paint, I can get the ends to look round-ish enough to look acceptable and I'm happy with this. But any comments/suggestions for an off-the-shelf product that might have the right shape to cover the ends are welcome!

I'd also bought red, yellow and green LEDs and found that they had fit into the Greenmax Signals. I haven't gotten around to finishing them, but I will post another article once done.

Meanwhile, in my previous post, I also added both a red and blue LED to a Bachmann N-Scale Signal. I actually cut it off its usual pole/base and mounted them as shunting signals. See the pictures. I'll post a more detailed explanation along with the other signals once finished.

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8Aug/106

Latest on the Model Railway

So, something that was just meant to turn into a test layout has now become one of my greatest creations... It's not much as yet, but the scenery and electronics involved is a lot more complex than I thought I would ever create and I'm really glad as to how it's coming along.

Here's a gallery of the initial track plan I intended on using and then 3 evolutions of it. The final layout is not actually listed there. You can see that it started as a single level basic loop, with options for expansion. As I realised the time required for building just this module, I decided to do away with the extension options (although things can always change) and then added a second level. This was just to be a ridge down the middle of the board, but it now has transformed into 1/4 of the overall surface area. A town has now grown on top and a nice siding for single-car vehicles.

Underneath the board is a birds-nest of wiring for all the tricks I've tried with the Arduino (see all the previous posts...) and I'll show you this in a later post.

For now, just check out the photos and I'll get back with more information as I create it. I'm currently working on street lights for the top town and also automation of the points. I've been through around 5 iterations for the control circuit for the points and damaged quite a few TomyTec FineTrack Points in the process. Not fun.

Here's a link to the whole album.