Review the new board for the estate yard.
Review Geoff's research into permanent magnets for Kadee uncouplers.
Work out how to fit and then fit some.
Review all other magnet positions.
Review point operation.
Review the new board for the fiddle yard.
As you can see, there was a lot of thinking this week, but some good physical work as well.
First up was to see the results of Geoff's experiments with the rare-earth magnets we'd failed with last week. He had worked out the unusual pole arrangement and determined they're best orientation was as a pair, side-by-side. These were set on a steel keeper plate and various layers of thin card inserted as spacers.
The next one went on one of the original, 1/2" chipboard boards. The handheld Dremel quickly became a mini-router. This time, the magnet went further into the baseboard, so a small steel keeper was fitted and a plywood fixing strip used. Some card packers were needed to get the distance from the rail top right, but it too worked nicely.
In fact, the use of hidden magnets meant we could remove all of the 'fake' pedestrian track-crossings, which made the layout look much nicer.
Stephen had recently visited the SWING model railway show in Bognor Regis and apart from some superb exhibits, noted the lack of solenoid 'clunking' on the layouts. Things have moved on since Cottesmore was on show - should we upgrade all the solenoids to motors? On cost grounds, we decided not to, but would consider reducing the multiple point groups to twins, or even singles, to allow the capacitor discharge unit to be downgraded, which might ease things slightly.
As the rest of the uncoupling points were discussed - train lengths, shunting moves, run-around routes etc were all thrashed out. It transpired that some mods to the multiple point firings would actually make operating much better. The main problem area was the full crossover, where currently, all four solenoids fire together. This has been reduced to four twins, but will require some 'deep thought' on the rewiring (by Marvin Geoff).
So, instead of developing our own electromagnets, permanent magnets will be used. We did find a spot for a Kadee electromagnet uncoupler purchased at SWING. Not cheap, but very useful.
Baseboards:-
Geoff had been busy. The yard board had its 125mm insert - inserted. A lovely feature was the road slopes down to the edge. Subtle - what an artist?
The new fiddle yard board was made from an old hollow door with a solid timber meeting face. A single sheet of 2mm plastic will be glued on top to allow the 12mm MDF cassettes to slide easily.
MDF to be purchased for the next meeting, so some cassettes can be made and tested.
