Shovin' out the WPF and gettin' nautical again, hoping to see a lots-o Model Railroading pics
Regards, Peter
Peter, thanks for getting the weekend started with a nice photo of the tug.
On my layout, this photo just caught a guy who dropped the pipe while loading the truck.
York1 John
I asked my doctor if I gave up delicious food and all alcohol, would I live longer? He said, "No, but it will seem longer."
Double post. Deleted.
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
Thanks for opening, Peter, great harbor scene.
Nice lifeboats, Bear.
Looks like at least nobody got hurt by the pipe, John!
I havent been doing much in the trainroom but progress is being made... in a "roundabout" way.
Quite a few months ago I think I made some mention about my cousin, a retired electronics engineer, making an automated index system for my turntable.
Well, he sent me a brief video a couple days ago proclaiming "We have liftoff"
He finally got it working, on a turntable of sorts, that he built to develope the index unit. Ya see, I live in Oregon, he's in Michigan.
Here it is in all it's provisional glory, in a picture I took of my phone with a camera to load to my computer to put on Fotki to put here.
Crude as it may be, it does prove the mechanism does function as it should, although he still wants to add features like graduating up to speed and back down.
He has digital readout on it, a 12 position rotary switch, an arduino controlled stepper motor, and lotsa stuff he understands that I don't.
When he gets it done, he'll send me the electronics. I have a stepper already installed on my TT, I just have to hook it up as he instructs me, preset all the stops, which he made programmable.
I'll post progress here as it comes along. We're both pretty exited about the whole thing, it ought to be a big improvement over eyeball indexing. AKA derailing machine.
Dan
Thanks for getting the Last of April WPF fired up, Peter! It was touch-n-Go there for a while!
Great stuff, everyone!
On the layout I managed to make some inroads at the Depot scene with some additional ballast, a little fence and a well-worn asphalt pavement:
Depot old Pavement by Edmund, on Flickr
There may not be any Pullman passengers boarding today but the porter stands ready just in case:
Porter Attention by Edmund, on Flickr
In the shop I'm adding a few details to an old Walthers blast furnace kit that I built back in '97:
Blast Furnace Overall by Edmund, on Flickr
Rearranging some hot gas piping and adding a few valves and pipes here and there.
Blast Furnace Precipitator by Edmund, on Flickr
Blast Furnace Right Stove by Edmund, on Flickr
Plenty of time for more fun contributions!
Cheers, Ed
John, KRELL PIPE CO might need to invest in a hoist of some sort?
Bear, Seeing the MAKWA is always a treat.
Dan, That's great having your cousin so deeply involved in your layout, and quite a tech project too.
Ed, Liking your 'crocodile pavement', also diggin' all the super detailed vessels, piping, valves and flanges on your blast furnace.
Thanks to all the contributors and viewers. Have a good week. Regards, Peter
Thank you again Peter. My cousin has a layout of his own too. He has pretty decent scenery on it so far, but he has no intentions or pretenses of realistic operation, switching etc, or super detailing anything. He just likes to put one train at a time on the layout and let it run at full speed or close to it for a while. Only has or wants one structure, a tiny mining shanty. He does however, being a techie, have DCC, and signals on every turnout. It meets his purpose perfectly.
I did help him, long distance through text and pictures, troubleshoot his trackwork, he was having tons of derailments and some dead spots. Now it's pretty trouble free.
He does appreciate and admire my more detailed approach, prototype structures, slower operation style and all that. He has really enjoyed the challenge of getting the "Twister", his tongue in cheek name of the project, up and going.
He tries to explain the process of programming the arduino, and interface to the stepper, and digital readouts (his idea) to me, but it goes WAY over my DC head in a hurry! By the time I get the mechanism, he will have made it very user friendly to install and set up for operation. Dan