Is it really the end of June? At least the heating has gone off now.

At the last report I was just about to head off to Chatham (pictured) with Swanton. Thanks to the Chatham MRC for organising a great show. A few people stopped to say hello. There was interest in the disc signal and I will post another blog entry showing progress. A couple of people expressed interest in the handbag but no one has bought one yet.

I managed to take a little time out on the Saturday to visit the Dickens Fair in the town with SWMBO. There is a free shuttle bus from the dockyard to the town. Something to bear in mind if coming by Public Transport.

Swaynton ran very well at Chatham, although the problem of the AJ couplings not working persists. At our post mortem meeting we took the opportunity to check the couplings on the electro magnet mounted to the layout. We also had another electro-magnet set up on a test track.

The findings are that is possible to get a constant magnetic field with the two magnets. So we can use one as the standard for setting up away from the layout. We then tested various wagons. Here is what we found.

1. The distance above the track is critical 1mm and no more or you start to lose the attraction.
   
2. The armature wire, made from a paperclip, must be as close to 1mm as possible. Below 0,9mm and they just don’t have the attraction. We measured some wires as being 0,6mm. I think that I will be buying some 1mm Iron from Eileens.
   
3. The dropper must be behind the wheel so that the coupling being forced down has a stop. We had one wagon that buried itself into the ballast!
   
4. Increasing the strength of the magnet does not work as it attracts the steel tyres on the wheels. This pulls the wagon back and re-couples the wagon.
   

The only other problem that I had was with my Airfix mogul 76009. As I took it out the box on Friday evening I found that the tender had become detached. Further investigation found that the fixing nut under the cab that also holds the body on had come adrift. After a bit of a struggle to get the screw out I found that the problem was worse. The nut was still glued to the plastic base, but the plastic base had broken away from the rest of the floor moulding. A temporary fix was made, but will need thinking about before our next outing.

Oh well on with posting progress of the signal.