28/08/06: Tweaking Time

Click any picture to enlarge it.

In the last month I have added the railway tracks to the first two baseboards, wired the tracks and road junctions and extensively tested and tweaked the roadway.

As I intend to have a high degree of automation it is vital that things do what they should, so I have been testing the road extensively with S17 5612 which, at a scale 36’, is the longest type of vehicle that I plan to use and has the hardest job getting around tight curves. This has highlighted certain problem areas and extra guide wires to catch stray vehicles have been installed.

The railway has been revised (again) and the sector plate has been lost. Instead there is a crossover which will allow the DMU to reverse and run back along the other line. The lines will, in normal use, extend around the garage making a full circuit with storage loops on the other side allowing a few passing freight trains to be operated.

The tracks run above the roads and are on 6mm ply supported on timber risers. The track is Peco Finescale (Code 75). Not the best looking track but it is readily available, cheaper than the alternatives and won’t be very visible anyway as it will be at or above most people’s eye-level.

The wiring uses a coarse colour code. Road junctions have orange wires, standard track feeds have blue wires and feeds to point frogs use black wires. All the wires run to 5A terminal blocks.

Popping into a local DIY store to buy an extra one, having used up my stocks, nearly caused heart failure when I found that they wanted over a pound for half a strip. If you have a local branch of Screwfix or need a few bits and bobs to bulk out the order from their on-line store then they can be obtained for a more reasonable 30p each. That is under 3p per connection.
The baseboard electrics will be connected using standard 25-way computer ‘D’ plugs and sockets.

These are quite capable of carrying the small currents used and are readily available. To wire the baseboard I cut a purchased 3m long cable in half and stripped the outer sheath off giving me a socket and 25 differently coloured wires. Each wire was run to a terminal block. A temporary control box was built and wired to the plug end of the cable. For trouble-shooting and later modifications each wire was numbered, labelled and recorded on a series of circuit diagrams.
To fix the wires to the baseboard I have used staples from a staple gun - quick, cheap and easy to revise if necessary. I found this tip on Steve Jones's Electric Nose web site. Well worth a browse.

Whilst testing with the S17 I have also marked the positions for the kerbs. This was a simple process of placing small plastic gearwheels along the proposed line and letting the bus push them out of the way. Once they were positioned so that they didn't get hit I could run a pen along the edge of the road.
The top photos shows the first of the fixed kerbs (60 thou styrene sheet strips) and the start of the roundabout and traffic islands.

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