The Little Things take all your time!

The first of the rails are now glued down, no turning back now! The first turnout as you enter the yard has been fixed down to the baseboard. This simple job has been hampered by some indepth procrastinating by yours truly. The turnouts are operated by a sliding piece of styrene that is mounted on the underside of the pc board sleepers. This method works well, no binding, but does create a void that won't let you ballast in this area.

The simple solution was to make a strip of contact that could be stuck to the underside of the turnout before the styrene spacer for the point blades is set in place. This enables a small hole just where the point blades goes through and around that the rest of the area can be ballasted. The pictures show the point in place with a couple of 'C' shaped cork bits to seal either side of the moving bits. The contact is a bit hard to see as the only stuff I had was clear, if you click on the photo it is more clear in the larger view.

A simple idea, that is easy to do, but did add a great deal of time to the job. The layout of the turnouts is easily seen in the last photo. It probably doesn't look much different to previous photos I've posted, but to me it represents quite a bit of time spent,

that's it for now, Geoff.

13 Class Sound

Well I arrived home yesterday to a little package on the bench. Yessirree! The Tsunami sound decoder had arrived. Helen was very enthusiastic with a " that's great!" It was 10pm so a visit to the train room was a little late.

Tomorrow has arrived and with a 11am start time I had a chance to see how the decoder would fit. I'd checked and re-checked the measurements and also made up a cardboard mock up of the decoder to make sure there were no mistakes. I didin't count on the decoder not matching to the stated size the manufacturer gives. The issue was the width, and only because the decoder seems to have two pieces that fold back on themselves and are then heat shrinked. The problem is that the two halves are not squarely over the top of each other. This then makes the measurements exactly the same as the widest point of the cylindrical boiler that I wanted to fit it into.

I pulled out the whitemetal files to see what could be done. In a couple of minutes the decoder snuggly fits into the boiler. There is no chance of it shifting, and the contact with the sides should aid in better heat dispersion.

Here's a photo to see how it all fits together, off to work now!

SSC-construction update 4

This past week has been a little slow in the modelling world. I have however managed to just about finish laying the timberwork on the first module. The process of staining and weathering the ties is one I enjoy. The trick is making the wood all seem a little bit different, whether the colour of the wood or the aging/weathering of it. I use sample pots of stain that I purchased from bunnings. I tend to favour the teak stain and mix it up with isocol so that it takes a couple of applications to get the colour right. I didn't mention that the one sample pot is all that I've reqired so far, so the $7 outlay for the pot is money well spent.

Also this week I had a an e-mail from Warren at GVM letting me know that the Micro Tsunami decoder i'd been quizzing him about at the Ipswich Show had arrived. I took the plunge and bought one, the price was a great deal, thanks Warren. I really hope the Aussie $$$ keeps going, it would be great to see it at $1.20 or so then EVERYTHING would have a sound decoder in it! Well at least the 32 would be purchased, you don't know when the pesky yanks will have an end to their recession!

I've been adjusting the modratec gear to fit each individual point as they're all a little different in how they're located. Today if I can stay focussed (worked 6pm till 4:30 am today, yep 3hrs sleep!) I will be organising the wiring of the points to the colour code that I've set up the module to.

That's about it, have a good one, Geoff.