I Believe I've Earned a Pint!

Entry posted by Ray Von April 14, 2017

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April 14th.

Today, in UNDER two hours - I fitted two peco PL-11 surface mounted point motors ....that might not sound much to you, but to me it's source of great pride! :-P

I went to Maplin first thing this morning, for more wire - not that I don't have enough wire but I didn't have any blue or any green. I purchased this for my own sanity as much as pragmatism, each wire serves a different purpose and goes from one "thing" to another "thing" and as you can probably tell, I know absolutely zip on the subject of wiring. In fact, I fear it.

So - armed with red, black, green and blue spools of wire, battle commenced. And I have to say, it went very well!
Step one involved marking the position in pencil of the point motor, putting it to one side and drilling a 5mm hole for the FITTED wires to go down. Then, chancing my luck, the motor was track-pinned to the base board in position - no mounting plate, no gouging out of cork board, nothing... It seemed to fit and go back n forth ok, when manually worked.

The wiring bit was not the most straightforward exercise, but it was done and - as you can see in the pics - it may not be text book! And is in need of tidying up a bit.
I should mention that I have never handled a soldering iron in anger, and thank God for the Eze-wire point switch box (pictured) - I found it accidentally on eBay, and can't praise it enough. It's great if you are unsure of your skills, or you are working on something that you may need to alter in a hurry! It also has the fitting instructions on the box.

Well, when I click the switches the points change! What more can I say? I'm feeling rather proud of myself. :-)

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