Point actuators
Yes, business as usual..... but we are making progress.
Geoff and Stephen fitted the operating wires to the remaining actuators. We discovered we'd bought two thicknesses of spring/piano wire, so decided to try both out.
Meanwhile, Laurence stripped out some existing H&M units and started to fit the new ones. Things didn't go as smoothly as they could have. The assemblies worked, but alignment of the operating wire needed to be more precise. We accepted that we were still developing a method of assembly and soon corrected the issues - a useful exercise.
Stephen fitted another unit and transferred the wiring from old to new units. As found previously, short wire extensions were required.
The other problem that came back to haunt us was John's method of point making. He preferred not to split the blades from the frog rails, which increased the stress on the blade/tie bar joints and obviated copper-clad tie bars. To overcome this, he silver soldered a solid tie bar to the blades. To prevent a short circuit, the tie bars could not come into contact with the stock rails. The old H&M rotating arm held the tie bar down in place, but this would not be retained. The first point to be converted needed something else to hold the tie bar down, and a short section of rail, laid down the centre of the track, was used.
As we are prone to do, we veered off on another, but allied subject. How were we going to operate the points? We were using toggle switches for the sections, so a rotary switch made sense. We had several 'standard' switches, but these only clicked through a small angle where something larger would be preferable. Stephen had sourced a switch, but found it only available as a DPST option (two on-off circuits instead of DPDT where polarity change-over could be achieved). Geoff suddenly remembered that he had TWO stashes of the switches, which were 'played with' and admired. Stephen suggested using them in conjunction with relays, to achieve the change-over. This arrangement was approved. It was agreed that instead of a round knob/pointer, something more demonstrative could be made up.
