TCA Show summary

[scott A Smiley <sc.smiley@juno.com>]

It has been a few days now so I may forget some things but others can
fill in t he gaps.

Fri. set up.  We got the trailer to the door probably 4:30 to 4:45.  By 6
we had all the modules up and connected ( with some errors though) 
Pretty fast.  carried a module in and set it up about where it would go. 
The second shift arrived at 6 and we got the scenery tables up the skirt,
Plexiglas and looked like a running layout at about 7.   We had not
shorts in the set up.  Thanks all we had a great turn out for set up. 
Then it was noticed that we had not set up the reverse curves correctly.

lesson learned.  The reverse curves always line up ABCD on both sides,
not all 5 tracks.  The E position track( inside one) is always dead
ending  into nothing. 

Lesson 2 - The 45 corners are not all the same.  two have Plexiglass
holders on the inside and two do not.  

Ricky/Rick noticed both of these and fixed them.

Sat. Morning - When we got the layout started, no one could control track
4, tracks 2 and 3 shorted out!!!!   It took me a while but I finally
figured out the problem.

Lesson 3 - The 45 degree corners or at least the two that are normally in
the reverse curve position ( remember we did not get this right) have
double wires to hook onto the new buss cable.  We had connected the buss
to the wrong ones in two locations so the wires were all crossed.  We had
the short jumper but hooked to the buss wrong.  When plugging into the
bus, the wires to be used always come out on the inside of the layout. 
If you need to cross under the layout to get to a connector, it is the
wrong one.!

Once we got connect correctly, all was good.  We had pulled the layout
some to connect so the walk through did not really work and actually had
a pretty good gap that some engines had problems with.  ( I did not have
the newly adjusted 90 degree corner by the bridge so that may have hurt
too.)  

One other thing.  the lights in the siding control box started flashing,
all of them!!  It was good a few minutes before.  Checking al l the
plugs, no better.  I did not spend more time on this so unplugged the box
from the power box and we did switched manually and only had track power
available on the sidings, what we use most anyway.  

We sold three club items and they gave us $50.  Total income $115.25.  

We started taking down scenery at 3:30.  The trailer was loaded and
rolling about 5.  The last were out by 5:30.  Good time for this.  It
really makes a difference when we can load the trailer as we take things
down.  

I hope everyone can learn from these mistakes as in this case we do not
always have the same group of members attending.  

Scott