Wednesday 16th November 2016

Worklist:
That crane again
Grass
Control panel

Laurence continued with his crane; this week working on the desk. Pressed about the task, he flourished his 'drawing' and said it was progressing nicely.

Stephen, having completed the installation of the new illuminated switches the previous week, plugged everything in and set about testing it. However, turning all sections off and moving a loco until it stopped threw up a few queries about section break positions and prompted a modification to the station area.

Geoff continued with electrostatic grass experimentation. Longer fibres of differing colours were tried and a better texture was achieved, which went down well with everyone.

Rather than use a J cloth over the end of the hoover, Geoff had produced a bespoke fibre collection tool that worked very well.

Stephen used Geoff's latest model - an O&K 0-6-0 kit by Sango - to test the sections.

Laurence couldn't resist 'having a play' before we packed away and out came his works train.

Wednesday 9th November

Worklist:
Control panel switches
Electrostatic grass
Crane mechanism

Geoff unpacked the new electrostatic grass applicator. It's the unit we saw demonstrated at ExpoNG, made by Grass Scene. It runs off a standard 9v dry cell and generates 15,000v, which it discharges into fibres via a threaded stud in the main container.

We hadn't purchased any glue with the kit, but did a trial with standard PVA and a 'tacky PVA' sold by Hobbycraft. This, we hoped would be similar to the special glue sold by Green Scene. Geoff applied both glues to a 'hidden' area and scattered some left-over fibre. We were not impressed - the fibres fell flat.

Pt II - Recalling the demo we saw, instead of copious amounts of glue, the tacky glue was then laid very thinly and 'Bingo!', we were in business. Geoff then tested different areas, with different techniques.

We also noticed that the pot of fibre that Geoff was using contained a selection of fibres, of different lengths and not many long ones. This all added to the experience that we know has to be built up in order to get just the effects we will need for different areas. We will also have to go back to Gordon Gravetts book, for advice.

Some of them worked and others didn't, but practice makes perfect.

Stephen continued to fit the new switches in the control panel. 1st remove a toggle switch, drill out a new 16mm hole, fit the new switch and transfer the wires. Finally, run a 12v supply to the LED pins of the switches. The job was completed just before packing-up time, so testing will have to wait until next week, but even the un-illuminated switches look good.

Laurence continued to work on the crane mechanism. We must find out how he's actually getting on and snap him doing it, soon.

Wednesday 2nd November

Worklist:
Static grass machine
Control panel switches
Yard crane
Ground works

The three of us had attended ExpoNG at Swanley over the weekend and we discussed what we had seen and liked. Geoff and Stephen had seen a demonstration of the Green Scene static grass applicator. Both were very impressed. Geoff decided to have another attempt with his home-made unit. A new 7KV High-voltage Generator had been purchased to replace a smaller unit that had never worked. After assembly, a trial proved that it was working, but only just. It was agreed that a Green Scene unit would be a sensible solution as Geoff had a lot of grass to lay on his own layout as well as Worton Court.

Stephen had arrived with a box of switches for the control panel. They were purchased through Aliexpress, a division of Alibaba - a Chinese 'sales facilitator'. Due to their price including free P&P, it meant they took two months to arrive.

Recap: We decided to replace the SPDT toggle switches with illuminated push-button switches. These had been very difficult to source and required some lateral thinking when searching the enormous range available. We discovered that in most available illuminated switches, the lights were always-on. Eventually, we sourced DPDT switches with separate light feeds i.e. 8-pin units. 12v lamps were chosen. One side of the switch was for the track feed and the other controlled the lamp.

After successfully testing the switch operation with a test meter, one existing switch was removed from the panel, a new 16mm hole cut and a new switch fitted. It looked very neat.

A new DC supply was now required. A standard voltage regulator was fitted, fed from the general 19v DC supply and tuned to 12v. The track section feed wires were soldered on, together with feeds from the new supply. It worked perfectly. The live sections will be very easy to identify in future.

A further 6 were fitted and the section feeds transferred, but the lamp feeds would be added later.

Laurence continued to work on the manual crane mechanism parts.

Geoff moved on to preparing the ground around the gas holder base and painting the area with acrylic paint.