Monday this week, was spent building the station ramps for access to Kyogle platform. I am also building the various fence panels. As the ramps began to take shape, I added the legs underneath them to support them at the correct angles. More fence panels were made up.
On Tuesday I painted the ramps my desired colour. Once that was dry, I added four runs of fencing to the model. I then joined these up and then added the last lot of three fence posts and made the last run of fence rails. So far the model looks passable. I still need to add the first two runs of fencing to the platform. These are just sitting on the platform not glued in yet.
I installed my Arduino to run off rectified track power, underneath Kyogle station. I also wired up the first three LEDs at the southern end of the platform. I tested them, and they all work. I have written the Arduino program to control all the lights, and it compiles. But I have not yet uploaded the program into the Arduino, or even tested the program on the workbench.
Thursday was my Anniversary so we all went to breakfast in town, and then did some shopping in the late morning. I gave my self a day off modelling.
Friday I got everything ready to take down to the Gold Coast Model Train Exhibition at Nerang. I thought I would spray paint 12 tea bags in various colours and have them ready to work on during Saturday. The car got packed so I could have an early get away. I watched the cricket on TV.
So, at the Gold Coast Exhibition on Saturday, I was doing demonstrations at the Exhibition. I started with the tarps. I already had a stash of painted tea bags, and first job was to cut them to HO size of a 24’ x 16’ scale tarpaulin size. After I had cut them all to size I moved onto the folding and tying up stage. I had a few people ask about them and I got some bystanders to fold up their own tarps and tie them up. Next task was to cut up 10 lengths each of two difference sizes of dowel. These were then split with a modelling knife to create a pile of fence posts. These were then dipped into a stain mixture of ink pad ink and metho. So that was the second job for the day. I can’t remember what I did after that. I think we put on a decent display for the day.
Being a glutton for punishment, I went back down to the Exhibition day for a half day, today. I added a tap to my scratch built hand basin for the Kyogle Signal box. I then made up the waste pipe from the hand basin. I still have a lot of detail to add to the signal box. I was hoping to fix my wiring for the two LEDs in the signal box, but I did not get around to that. I will get onto that either tonight or tomorrow. The next demonstration was to build a structure to allow two roof top whirly birds inside a large shed to turn in unison when connected to a slow rev motor. My previous effort did not have aligned gears and the motor would not run the gears. There was just too much friction. So I built a new structure. Now it is free spinning and the device spins way too fast, even with a slot rev motor. So I have made a gear reduction drive and it is still too fast. I can still but one more gear reduction in line. However, I do have a tortoise motor that runs at about 3 turns per minute, maybe I will drop the drive reduction building and just use a tortoise to control the whirly birds.
We had some interesting conversations with people from Sydney, Hobart, and also some locals. Numbers through the door certainly picked up today.
I’m back at work later this week for a few days, and then I think I’ll shout myself some more time off from mid next week.
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