Long time no post

A couple of months have gone by since the last post, so it's probably time for an update.  It's still too damn cold outside to actually start on the garden section of the railway, but some progress has been made on the indoor station and yard area.  After some test running with the new Bachmann Brassworks 03 it was discovered that because of it's short wheelbase it was stalling on one of the Peco points.  After a little multimeter action the cause was found to be that the point blades were a few millimeters longer than the 0-6-0 wheelbase of the 03, and one of the blades was not getting power from the adjacent rail.  The offending point was lifted and short lengths of wire soldered underneath the fishplates that Peco use to hinge the point blades, and once relaid all was well.  This has lead me to another decision - I was pondering what DCC decoder to fit to 03078 and this has pretty much made up my mind to go for a Lenz Gold and try out one of the Power1 USP (Uninterruptible Signal Processing) devices.  This will also allow me to fit another Uhlenbrock SUSI sound decoder as the Lenz Gold has a SUSI connector.  This will all likely come to around a hundred quid but will probably be worth it if the Power1 is as magical as it is described.  Basically it's a capacitor that stores enough power to supply the decoder should the loco hit a dead spot or dirty track.  This means that the loco should continue on it's merry way until track connectivity is restored without the decoder losing power thus retaining its speed settings, etc.  For a shunting engine this sounds like a very good idea, and hopefully this will also help when running outside where it's unlikely that the track is going to be as clean as the proverbial whistle.