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 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.
