Fascias get a facelift
On Monday night work sessions held at my place Barry has been steadily applying coats of paint to the fascias over the last few months but somehow he avoided (or I forgot to take) any pictures of him actually doing all that work. Sorry Bazz..... I was lucky to get a few snaps on two Monday nights this month when he was applying some finishing touches and the first coat on a few areas. Keep up the good work Barry!
Hornertown
Additional people have been added to the town scene, more ties have been painted, Park, Playground & Cross of Remembrance placed and control panel wiring.
Town Scene
BJ has added about 100 figures and the bus has arrived at the bus stop. The sheriff is still to arrive to collect the people arrested and handcuffed by a local officer.
Yard Ties
Whilst visiting BJ tries to spend an hour or two painting ties at Hornertown - still a very long way to go with this one!
Park, Playground & Cross of Remembrance
BJ has been busily working away modelling a park that has a carpark, playground and Cross of Remembrance. Still to be installed (in place of the block of wood ) is the Millers illuminated sign shown in the April update.
Hornertown Passenger Station
BJ has scratch built the station structure based on pictures found in various SP Book accumulated over the years. The palm trees are on order and should arrive sometime net month.
Control Panel
Feeders to the turnout motors all terminated.
Wiring loom preparation to connect the face of the panel to the terminal strips. Six core wires cut to length on left and cover stripped off and the green core removed and placed on the right (each one has a cable tie on one end so I can find each set).
Loom construction and termination sequence
Looms completed above and panel below
The installation of the interlocking between the main and local panels is still to be completed.
Trains ready for test running
Daveyston
Back in the February Update I outlined the approach that we are using to pass a track through the backdrop in order to disguise it. I am please to say that Bill2 has constructed the buildings from card stock which has been laminated with the CQ Textures prints. BJ scratch built the elevated walkway to connect the buildings and I think the result is great! Well done boys!
BJ and I spent some time "laying out" the town of Daveyston, some arrangements were better than other and we have finally settled on the building locations.
We cut the backdrop with the Dremel using a cut off wheel. The vertical cuts were not square to the backdrop and were aligned with the plane of the walls passing through the backdrop.
The buildings constructed by Bill2
The walkway
Putting it all together
View down and at rear of backdrop
Trial arrangements of Claxton Lumber Co.
The chosen arrangement
Adding sidewalks
The "town" area buildings have been arraged and the road location defined.
Testing the Mainline on the Bottom Level
I have starting testing sections of the bottom level mainlines which are being "commissioned" I use large locos and a variety of freight cars and a string of carriages which have been determined as "picky" due to their reliance on good track work to function correctly!
Rossco has been installing copper sleepers and "tweaking" some of the mainline track work.
Remote Viewing
Picard Junction is remote from the main control panel and the track work is not so simple. the screen shows (from l to r) Stirling Branch, Lewiston Loop, Inner main, Outer main, LeMaistre Loco arrival, LeMaistre Loco departure. This monitor has two inputs and the other input shows a view inside the helix.
Eventually there will be two more screens below this one to remotely observe the two hidden staging yards, one under Hornertown and the other under Flinston - they will be able to hold 3 full trains in each staging area. Each staging area is double ended and will have a remote camera at each end to ensure trains are within the clearance points.
Lighting
The lighting will be achieved with 20 Halogen spotlights for the upper level and the front section of the lower level with led strip lighting for the rear section of the bottom level.
The spotlights will be fixed to the underside of the "Bondek" ceiling using wedge nuts and setscrews.
Welcome home Chris who has just spent six weeks touring the UK (including York) and Europe including a ride on a TGV. The first 'usual' Tuesday morning coffee and work sessions with BJ & Chris was held this week.
Chris back into wiring....
So was Bob back into wiring again...
I managed to assist Rossco aka Ros on Model Rail Radio set up the "Sandgate & Southern" Blog - have a look if you wish. Next month the goal is to get "Pam's" Blog up and running.
Thanks to the Monday Night crew and BJ for all their efforts.
Till next month.
-ooOOOoo-
