Phew! Got a lot done today after my stockpile of parcels arrive in the morning. First job was to continue work on the ply trackbed. I haven't really taken a photo of it yet, but you can part of it in the photo below. As you can see, the headshunt for the single standard gauge siding can fit in a small loco and 3x 4-wheeled tanks. The loco is pressed right up against the buffers, and on the right you can see there is only just enough space to switch the point by the rear wheelset of the last tank wagon. It's gonna require some very careful driving if you want to take out 3 wagons at a time!
And with that, for some reason dad was very keen to start wiring up the point motors. This took up the entire rest of the day from about 5 till 8.30! It was very fiddly and frustrating at times, but we soon got quicker once we had worked out a strategy. Let's just hope that they work!
That's 17 points motors wired up. Note the early attempts with the white wire - you can see we got neater as the night progressed!
The photo below shows the first step - Dad wired the...wires... up to the 6 terminals. The insulation was twisted, and then removed to give a longish bare bit of wire. The wire was then folded over on itself to give greater thickness for the connector blocks to grab onto! It took a while for us to realise this was what was needed. We may have to revisit the earlier ones and do this with them:
The photo below shows our method of keeping the motors still whilst soldering. A hole was drilled into a spare bit of ply (which was then supported on battens). The little clamps were used both to hold the point motor in place, and to hold the wires in place whilst soldering. Means you don't have to have 3 hands!
And as mentioned in the early blogpost today, here is the magnificent 3D printed wagon courtesy of Mark! I've written on the rough dimensions of the wagon to give you an idea of just how tiny this wagon is. I was worried I would break the axleboxes getting the wheels in, but I needn't have worried! I don't know if it was intentional, or a result of the printing process, but there is even a woodgrain effect on the underside of these wagons! Amazing.
And I've added in some photos of the wagon laden with barrels as per the prototypes. It's hard to make out the detail when the wagon is white, but believe me when I say there is a lot of it!
Well there we go, a hugely productive day today! I can safely say the wagon is a huge success, and I think the layout will be progressing rapidly in the next 3 weeks. Speaking of which, flexitrack should be with us next week some-when. I must remember to pick up some insulated fishplates and more wire, too.
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