Dave and Vicki

Having installed the lighting power feed I thought I’d play further with my LED’s that I picked up on monday. The result is that the cottage, the post office and the pub are now illuminated. The pub needs redoing with a lower resistor though as it’s too dim. With the cottage/post office I’m going for the sort of table lamp light levels to give a dull glow rather than a stadium lighting crew and I think it’s worked ok, I seem to have dead reckoned it out at about the right level (10K Ohm resistor). It’s a different LED (lower power) on the signal box so it’s got a4.7K Ohm in series. I migth try the low power LED in the pub somewhere between 2-3 K ohm and see what it looks like. The part I’m particularly pleased with is the secondary signalbox that started life as a free Metcalfe kit in a magazine and that I added detail to on the inside. Careful removal of the roof allowed me to run some wires through and install an LED from the ceiling. In the dark it looks awesome as the signalman is in a pool of light with the edge of the fireplace and lever frame just in view. The pics are noisy as they’re shot in the dark, but it looks great in reality. Next I’m going to try fitting working street lamps and some yard lights and think how to retrofit the station and engine shed.

Oh yeah, and electrodroid for smart phones is amazing, it’s probably my most used app with ASCII tables, resistor codes, pin out mappings etc, and totally free!

It’s been raining again today so we popped to Maplins and I picked up a new soldering iron (Antex 25W) and some 7/0.2 wire. I then added the 2 secondary power feeds to the other dead lines (easily thanks to an iron that works) and whilst I was under the board I installed a 2 wire run for the uncontrolled DC output of the controller to use for lights. Feeling on a roll I de-soldered the previous LED’s for buffer lamps, trimmed them down and re-attached in line along with some wire droppers, then heatshink wrapped the lot into a nice neat package. I’ve fed these through small holes near the buffer stops and then fixed to the power feeds under the boards. I’ve got a mixed bag of LED’s I’ll use to add some light to the buildings as well soon, and I’ve drilled the pilot holes so it shouldn’t be too hard now the bus is installed.

Now the roads are sorted out I thought I’d turn my attention back to the rails; in particular the sidings. I’ve got a test track setup for testing magnetic uncouplers/grass uncouplers. In the meantime, what’s definite is the need for a headshuntto avoid fouling the mainline whilst shunting. As it stood I could only take one wagon from the train and then had to time the move right to avoid hitting the mainline as it came round. Not only does this addition remove that problem, it allows me take 3 wagons in a go without fouling the point. It took some effort to fit, but wiring was fairly simple since I wanted to interlock it to the access point; when the mainline point is closed, the headshunt is open and vice versa to protect the mainline. Whilst I was at it I did a bit more rewiring in terms of power feeds, ditching the old train controller wires and adding my own, longer, newer cables which makes life easier and means I’ll chop out the power feed track for aesthetics. I added the test example of the buffer lamp as well since it was the only one I had to hand, so that was fortuitous! All in all, pretty good progress but I definitely need a new/better soldering iron so I’ve got an Antex on my wishlist.