Jib crane.
2-plank wagons.
Switch box.
No, we haven't been holding elicit meetings, it's just that a few WC projects have reached a suitable stage for an interim report.
Wednesday 1st April - The Team met up for a post-lunch chat using the ubiquitous Zoom. Stephen and Geoff had used it before and Laurence's wife Sheila uses it for yoga classes, so Laurence had excellent technical support. It was really great to talk and see each other, and give updates on how Covid-19 lock-down was affecting us all. Laurence was taking it easy, with brief forays into the garden, while Geoff was busy on his 4mm loft layout, having issues with mounting servo point actuators for difficult locations. Stephen was finishing three projects for Worton Court and gave a brief report on each.
The final parts of the jib crane were the stays and chain. Rather than rely on the thin, malleable wire for the stays, he slid 1/16" brass tube over the wires and glued the jib rigid. Photographs had indicated that the stays were thicker than the kits wire and the tubing will definitely not get bent in usage, like the wire has on the other jib crane on the layout.
The crane on its 'cardboard' paved base, all weathered using Revell powders. The crane had a threaded stud glued in the bottom that is secured with a spring underneath, to remain solid, but allow it to be rotated.
A second pair of Stephen's underframes had been printed out and, after modification (reshaping the plate frame and reducing the axlebox profile), another wagon had been made up in plywood. The 3D drawing has been modified accordingly and Geoff will print a few more, for future use.
Instead of using the wooden box found in the workshop (ex-power supply box), Stephen had found a shallower, more spacious box with a lid (ex sewing box/darts spares box!). Moving on from the previous diagram, a more detailed wiring layout was produced.
The box is the cabling hub for 5 boards - Adaptor boards #1 to #4 and the Engine shed board. The loose red/black wires above will be wired-in when we next work on the layout. The cables supply feeds from boards #1 and #4 to the box and, via the two button boxes, to change the feeds to boards #2 and #3. Feeds from board #1 also go through to the Local control panel, so that the Main panel can control trains right through the Local panel to the fiddleyard. The
The button boxes have longer leads and attach to the control panel sides with Velcro, so they can be removed when all five exhibition boards are employed, which keeps the panels simpler. Unable to source any suitable plastic project boxes, Stephen made boxes from 2mm plastic sheet (from a pile of rescued advertising panels). Basically 150 x 50 x 50, with removable bottoms, they were spray primed and finished satin black.
The SPDT push button switches with LED indicators were fitted. Due to sourcing problems, only two yellow and two green were purchased, but these were assigned to Main and Local panels for easy identification. Again due to being unable to find 5v DC switches, the neon's/LED's and integral resistors were replaced with standard 3mm ultra bright white LED's without integral resistors. This is the reason for common resistors on the PCB unit. The 5 wires per switch in the original test design posed the problem of requiring 10 wires to each box - not a common cable size. However, this was reduced to 8 wires per box by combining common returns (which was not without a great deal of hair pulling). 8 wire network cabling was much easier to source, and 2 x 3m long 'flexible' Cat5E patch cables were used. The connectors were cut off and the boxes wired up.
Whatever else we do, we decided that we will definitely have weekly Zoom meetings on our usual Wednesday's, to generally catch up with each other and, hopefully share our latest projects.
The wagons with basic brake gear and further weathering.
