So, the next instalment. The Gaugemaster TLU arrived from Rails of Sheffield on Friday, so earlier today I experimented with hands-free uncoupling. This is what is supplied:
The first job was to drill the two holes (one countersunk) as per instructions, the only slight deviation was the use of a 4mm drill bit instead of 3.5mm:
Please ignore the quality of the surface – this is just a test track to ascertain if this is the solution to my coupling conundrums! Once the holes were drilled, I pinned the track back down, cutting back one of the sleepers, again, as per instructions:
Please ignore the quality of the surface – this is just a test track to ascertain if this is the solution to my coupling conundrums! Once the holes were drilled, I pinned the track back down, cutting back one of the sleepers, again, as per instructions:
Once turned back over, the ramp was dropped through the centre of the solenoid and the screw on the shaft tightened:
It works brilliantly! No unintended uncoupling when wagons a pulled slowly across as the ramp is only raised when the switch is pressed. The solenoid is quite noisy but when these are fitted to the layout, I may be able to encase them in something to deaden the sound a bit. The instructions mention to check that the ramp does not sit too high when using fine scale track (my test was conducted using code 100), so I’ll use code 100 track on Trundle rather than code 75.
I've taken a video of it in action, so will post this first, then see if I can upload the video.....