Hi all,
Has been a long time since drinks! Not much has happened in the Man Cave lately due to work commitments and other various things happening. Something Dad has been working on is signals and signal boxes, as we move toward finally putting some scenery in. Dad's signal box idea is to have the control panels hidden away inside a 'lookalike' control room that has a flip lid for easy access. The result is what follows and has turned out to be a great idea. All of the wiring is kept underneath the panel, utilising a couple of brass terminal blocks (same as what was used for the track wiring) for all of the connections.
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| Inconspicuous, no? |
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| Aha, there's a panel! Red buttons to set the points to the yards, black for the main and then of course the toggle switches for the signals. |
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| Bit of signal action. |
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| Another one of these bloody boxes. |
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| Inside this one. Still to add signals, and you can see how it correlates here to the actual track arrangement. |
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| This one hasn't had its outside built yet but will eventually. The dwarf is hooked up to the point so when it switches so does the signal. |
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| The house side of Parramatta Station, still a bit of work to do. |
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| The down side of Parramatta Station, nearly complete. |
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| Inside Parramatta 'B' Box (or maybe it should be A?). |
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| This was Dad's original design before moving to the covered inconspicuous look. No doubt this one will be modified and will have a casing around it as well. |
The layout is set up so only mainline points have been fitted with point motors, leaving everything else still hand operated (as it mostly is in real life really).
Rollingstock additions has also been minimal since the last update, the XPT arrived including a couple of special livered Power cars, 4 L Classes (1xWestrail, 1xPN and 2xATN) from SRM fitted with sound and 3 first series X Classes also arrived this week. Oh and picked up a few goodies from the Auscision store opening including a GWA, WBAX Van pack and another AHGX Grain hopper pack. Also picked up a couple of VHQF's cheap from the Sunshine exhibition to replace two of the Railmotor models version we had which were fitted with the wrong bottom doors. Maybe it hasn't been so minimal!!
Till next time!
