Bullhead
Western Thunderer
Today, I made a mock-up of the Marchford Creek control panel.
The black dots on the track diagram show roughly where the various led indicators will be. For some reason I decided to use surface mount leds and resistors – so, 52 tiny components (that I can barely see) to be soldered to a pcb with sub-millimetric accuracy. Let’s do this! Note: On the real thing, the switches will be in a straight line! The upper row of 6 on-on dpdt switches are for the Tortoise point motors, the lower row of 4 (on)-off-(on) dpdt are for the uncoupler coils, each switch activates one coil in each direction.
The indicators will show for the traverser – alignment, occupation and over-run, for the rest of the scheme, turnout position and uncoupler activity. As the layout control is by DCC, nothing else is required.
Here’s one I made earlier, this time attached to enamelled copper wire for use in a small building. VERY fiddly but worth the effort.
Also this week, I’ve put some time into preparing artwork for the various pcb’s that are required. This has taken much longer than anticipated but is moving on well now. These circuits are for the IR detectors for the traverser (top left), the uncoupler coil arc suppression circuits (bottom left) and a Tortoise test rig. More to follow on these.
The black dots on the track diagram show roughly where the various led indicators will be. For some reason I decided to use surface mount leds and resistors – so, 52 tiny components (that I can barely see) to be soldered to a pcb with sub-millimetric accuracy. Let’s do this! Note: On the real thing, the switches will be in a straight line! The upper row of 6 on-on dpdt switches are for the Tortoise point motors, the lower row of 4 (on)-off-(on) dpdt are for the uncoupler coils, each switch activates one coil in each direction.
The indicators will show for the traverser – alignment, occupation and over-run, for the rest of the scheme, turnout position and uncoupler activity. As the layout control is by DCC, nothing else is required.
Here’s one I made earlier, this time attached to enamelled copper wire for use in a small building. VERY fiddly but worth the effort.
Also this week, I’ve put some time into preparing artwork for the various pcb’s that are required. This has taken much longer than anticipated but is moving on well now. These circuits are for the IR detectors for the traverser (top left), the uncoupler coil arc suppression circuits (bottom left) and a Tortoise test rig. More to follow on these.