Continued Fun
Finding time to work on the trains seems to be difficult this season. The kids, 3 years old, both want to help... yes twins, boy and girl, if you're stuck on the why 1 age... but don't really contribute too much except a lot of excitement (some unwanted when they get interested in things they shouldn't)
So not making too much progress but here's what's happened these last couple weeks -
More bench work construction. Putting in the small pieces for hidden track. Ran power cables, re-used the old stuff. Labelled it better this time around.
Found some junk server rails at work so I re-purposed them to make a slide out drawer. Figure these can hold, oh, about 150 to 200 lb's extended to 3 feet, so probably *ok* for me leaning on it. Learned a lot about drawers and being square. yikes. But it works, maybe not as smoothly as I'd like but its pretty good. I'm going to use this as my "backwall" in Telco speak. So all the electronics will feed in and out of here. Except the Tam Valley Quad's that need to be near to their panels... or do they?! they do because of the allowable cable distance for the button. I'm going to see if I can't Macgyver something so I can put the quad's on the drawer.
Note the use of some old BIX blocks on the right (like AT&T 110 blocks but the Nortel / Canadian version) for my sensors connections to the TC-64 loconet converter. I'm using some photo sensors in serial, so 3 or 4 per detection section. Each has two leads, 1 goes to a common, the other to an input on the detection board. With currently 16 sections, that's a possible 64 little wires inter-connected. A real mess... then one day as I was punching down dial tone at work, I had a eureka moment. I use telephone wire (24 awg) to all the sensors, so this would be a perfect solution to keep it organized and neat. Also changes are a breeze.
Due to the sheer number of Quad's to drive servers, I'm anticipating two boosters. I've got one from Tam Valley and its beautiful. Very professional, like all of the Tam Valley stuff.
I also have a DCC specialties PSX-AC that some day, I'm sure, I'll use. That would go here as well.
Managed to get some track installed. This would be the hidden loop that will be underneath things. So had to get it completed first. Wired up with power.
Which, really, was just an excuse to test it. Meaning I could runs trains for the first time in 6 months!
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| Because every layout needs a comfy chair ! |
More bench work construction. Putting in the small pieces for hidden track. Ran power cables, re-used the old stuff. Labelled it better this time around.
Found some junk server rails at work so I re-purposed them to make a slide out drawer. Figure these can hold, oh, about 150 to 200 lb's extended to 3 feet, so probably *ok* for me leaning on it. Learned a lot about drawers and being square. yikes. But it works, maybe not as smoothly as I'd like but its pretty good. I'm going to use this as my "backwall" in Telco speak. So all the electronics will feed in and out of here. Except the Tam Valley Quad's that need to be near to their panels... or do they?! they do because of the allowable cable distance for the button. I'm going to see if I can't Macgyver something so I can put the quad's on the drawer.
 |
| Note the planned booster positions. Track power is above |
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| Power to left, sensors to the right |
Note the use of some old BIX blocks on the right (like AT&T 110 blocks but the Nortel / Canadian version) for my sensors connections to the TC-64 loconet converter. I'm using some photo sensors in serial, so 3 or 4 per detection section. Each has two leads, 1 goes to a common, the other to an input on the detection board. With currently 16 sections, that's a possible 64 little wires inter-connected. A real mess... then one day as I was punching down dial tone at work, I had a eureka moment. I use telephone wire (24 awg) to all the sensors, so this would be a perfect solution to keep it organized and neat. Also changes are a breeze.
Due to the sheer number of Quad's to drive servers, I'm anticipating two boosters. I've got one from Tam Valley and its beautiful. Very professional, like all of the Tam Valley stuff.
I also have a DCC specialties PSX-AC that some day, I'm sure, I'll use. That would go here as well.
 |
| Yeehaw ! first track down ! |
Which, really, was just an excuse to test it. Meaning I could runs trains for the first time in 6 months!
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