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The Dummy Experiment


Miserable

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So here's the LEDs. You can get them with the connections to the LED insulated, but they were out of stock everywhere so I went for these, warm white ones, from Layouts4You. They come ready fitted with a resistor for 12V operation - it seems to make sense to stick to one voltage so all lighting can go on one bus round the layout.

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Next was to add the arm/disc and the shutter on the back, remembering to add an extra hole in the shutter for the rod that will operate the signal. The lamp hole lines up with the holes for the lenses well enough, and out of the back it's a positive searchlight, so this one will go with it's back to the audience on the Long Siding (which means I should have painted the disc black, with a yellow stripe - dammit).

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I'd made the frame up earlier, drilling top and bottom to put the wires through.

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The LED installed. The plan, which seems to be working so far, is that a plug of Evostick will hold the LED in place, without shorting. To this end I had the LED powered up all the time while the glue went off, but in fact even chucking the thing on the floor didn't cause any problems. The glue didn't affect the cables either, which is nice.

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Adding the crank and weight. This basically just on goes on a bit of wire as hinge. I did consider making this work with the signal, but it seemed a lot of effort for little gain. I may try it on the next one.

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With the lamp box Araldited back on (the glue again not affecting cables) and the cables routed through the stand. Oddly the wires doing that are not unprototypical, and fairly near scale so the add to it rather than detract.The photo's gone a bit weird there, it's not made of some exciting new alloy.

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And the back of it. You can see how the operating rod could also drive the crank. After not having a lot of luck trying to get brass and nickle-silver wire/rod to bend nice and small through the hole in the back shutter I literally stood on an old .010 top E guitar string on the floor.... humm, yet, it bends beautifully without snapping - and it will take solder I just thought I'd check. It also acts like piano wire (unsurprisingly) and doesn't kink when bent.

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Here's a shot of the front after priming, to wit Halfords grey etch primer sprayed into a lid and applied with a dinky brush. It's nice and thin and doesn't clog the detail. A scan be seen, I was a tad off with the pivot rod - more care next time - but it does work.

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And here it is fully painted. Except the disc, which needs to be black/yellow now. Ooops. It'll get a bit of a tone down before fitting. Again the camera has gone a bit weird zooming in - the stand is sleeper grime not whatever it is it looks like!

 

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