Everything under Control?
Entry posted by D869
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It's quite some time since I posted the draft of the new signalling diagram on here. Since then we have been constantly debating over the right time to actually put the thing on the panel. It's always been easier to say 'right after the next show' but we've finally got fed up with all of the annotations, crossings out and other amendments on the panel so have got around to doing it.
Here's the middle part of the panel showing the state it had got into after four years of 'clarifications' and amendments like the revised sea siding.
The new artwork needed to fit the original panel, so we spent a lot of time checking the alignment. I think that we finally had three separate rounds of alignment testing before committing to the new plan.
Naturally the job also involved John doing a complete strip down of the panel, so is not something that we want to repeat very often.
The original overlay was printed on six A4 sheets or paper, stuck down and then varnished. This time around we decided to try getting it professionally printed. The print was also laminated with a matt plastic on the side facing us. Here's the print straight from the print shop.
After a good deal of testing different glues using some scrap prints from the printers we decided on PVA so the panel was rubbed down, painted (the new overlay is not quite opaque enough to stop the old diagram showing through) and the finished print stuck down and left to dry. Once dry the holes were cut out, starting by shining a light behind the panel.
Finally the switches were reassembled back onto the panel (John again) and it was ready for a test drive last Saturday. Here's the panel at the start of Saturday evening, almost fully reassembled with just the uncoupler switches still to do.
We spent a few hours with the boards assembled doing an 'integration test' with the revised panel. Happily I can report that the panel still works (just in time for Kidderminster) and just needed a couple of switches swapped around. Here's the panel on test...
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