Update here before Christmas
Merry Christmas everyone!
Fergus and Dave spent the last three mornings working on the Sunshine Foundation Charity layout including completing the Masonite facia board, completing the track wiring, working on the tunnel tracks and connecting the turnout motor dropdown wires to the control switches on the facia board.
Yesterday they continued soldering extension wires to the dropdown wires on the switch motors that were then connected to the control switches. They still have three of the nine turnouts left which need wires attached. Yesterday Fergus and the young recipient cleaned the tracks and then Fergus started testing with one of his engines and then started pulling his track cleaning care around the tracks. After fixing a few minor issues he then ran one of the young fellow’s engines successfully. See photos and notes below. Fergus also posted a short video on Facebook of the trains running, see
They plan to go back in the new year for a few sessions to finish a few things including completing the harbour scene, touching up the scenery along the top edge of the facia board, finish the wiring of all turnout motors. Some of the turnout motors also require a little cleaning of ballast etc. to get them to actuate properly. Also likely the family will find a few track issues over Christmas that we will deal with in the new year.
Hope everyone has a good Christmas holiday and Happy New Year.
They were still having a few issues with track alignment in the tunnel with the swingout section. Over the last few sessions Fergus created the floating section of track in the tunnel where the tracks butt up to the two tracks on the swingout section. This allows for some adjustment of the track alignment is case changes of room temperature and humidity cause misalignments.
Switch installed to supply power to all tracks when the swingout section is closed. The mounting holes in the aluminum angle holding the switch are slotted to allow adjustment so that the swingout section needs to be almost fully closed before the switch closes to supply power to the tracks.
Pullout drawer with the Digitrax controller with wires attached for track power and for the programming track by the turntable. Fergus had his hand held controller attached to this for his testing.
Track cleaning car operating on the inner track. The dangling wires of the track power bus will be trimmed and fastened to the underside of the swingout section.
Swingout section open. We plan to cut a slot in the facia board so the that the swingout will rest of the ledge on the right for extra support when fully open.
Harbour scene where boats still need to be glued down and water poured around them.