ikcdab

Why is the 3.9mm one mentioned above no good?

I use these minature relays - ebay link This is the diagram: I'm not quite sure how your voltage from the track works, all you say is "taking power from the track on the side being switched". So I assume you know what you are doing there. The relay doesn't mind what polarity the input is, so that gets over your direction issue. The LEDs are powered from a separate supply that is a fixed polarity. The voltage of this does not matter, you just need to size the resistor accordingly. I use a 1K resistor for 12v or a 270 ohm for 5v. When there is no voltage from the track, the relay is open and one LED is lit. When there is voltage from the track, the relay closes and the other LED lights. Hope this makes sense! Ian

Hi James, thanks, I'll PM you. Ian

I think the scalescenes bridge would fit the bill. The kit is flexible for width and I actually built mine as two arches to span two different lines. And you can download it in stone (ashlar) https://scalescenes.com/product/r011-arched-bridge/ It's recommended. Ian

LEDs are far preferable and you could fix your problem by using a miniature relay.

As said above, you have two options. Either you repeat the switch position, which only shows you the instruction sent to the point motor, or you have some form of feedback from the point to show that it has answered the point motor. On a model railway, I suggest that the former is perfectly adequate. I do this on my own layout by having a rotary switch aligned on the track diagram so that the pointer on the switch knob aligns with the route selected. If you had a multiway rotary switch (very cheap on eBay) you could wire in a led as well. If you want to do the latter, which could be much more fun, I would look to fix up a small slide switch that is operated by the point tiebar. Use a spdt switch and each side can operate a led on your control panel. Does that make sense? If not, let me know and I'll draw up a diagram this evening. I don't know the GM500 at all but an ordinary dpdt relay (again, very cheap on eBay) would do this job very well and replace the GM500 which look like an expensive solution. Ian

Thanks for the reply. I find this circuit excellent and I would recommend it to anyone. It's simple to build and effective. Ian

Thanks for the reply. I use the MERG servo4 boards and drive them with the MERG servosetplus software. I have the speed on the slowest it will go! Thats the penalty for driving the gates directly from the servo. If I had an indirect drive (i considered using spur gears) then I could have geared it down a bit more. But I found I had too much backlash in the gear train and the gates didn't stop accurately. So I opted for the direct drive and slightly faster. For more than 30 years I was a signalman on the WSR and I swung the gates at Blue Anchor on very many occasions. They could go like that if the wind was blowing hard! The other advantage is that come the day when I have a train barreling down onto a crossing with gates not yet open, I might just get them open in time to avoid too much destruction! Hi Ian, thanks. It is convenient that MERG do the servo4 boards and that servos are very cheap. The adjustments to get accurate motion with one servo and linkages sound fearsome. Red lights: may be. I used the MSE kit which does come with some fairly amorphous pieces to represent lights. I didn't put them on because some photos of the prototype didn't have them and I didn't like the castings. But I now think that having the red lamps might add a bit of colour and I might add them on. But I want to get the road and wicket gates done first. Ian

So finally its all setup and working. I had to change out a servo that couldn't manage 90 degrees. Little bit of tweeking in the MERG servosetplus software and we are off. I have programmed in some bounce so that the gates appear to bang against the stops and bounce back....let me know what you think.. Ian

My compressor went bang yesterday. The cam on the end of the motor has sheared off. It is very old. I have tried a repair but it failed, I will try again today. It is obviously a high stress area so needs to be a strong joint. So now I am looking for a possible replacement. Looking on Amazon I see two types: https://amzn.eu/d/4o224iH this is very similar to the one i am replacing at £63. Otherwise I see there are ones with tanks such as Fengda Airbrush https://amzn.eu/d/aMEjEdu I am using this to power an iwata neo for painting my OO models. Any recommendations? Thanks Ian

Yes I know about inclining stuff and that's what I do. But however you incline it, you still have to start the print somewhere, hence my question about how far the first layer of the print can span between supports. I have done two print runs today. The first one had a few gaps in three print, luckily on the hidden side. I immediately ran the print again with the identical print file and that one went perfectly. The only difference would be thatv the second print was after the printer has thoroughly warmed up.... Though it is situated in a normally central heated house.

Hi James thanks. I am seiving out my log burner later on so I'll save some ash. I look forward to seeing your photos. Scenics are not my strong point, I far prefer mechanical stuff electrical things! Ian

Thanks, yes i do that. In this case i have inclined things 45 degrees for just that reason. Its a longitudinal girder.

So a further question. Supports. In the attached image, you will see the first part of the print appearing as a black line spanning the supports. My question is, how far can resin span in this situation? Bearing in mind its only 50 microns thick at the start, there must be a lot of strain when the build plate tugs it away from the FEP. Up until now I have crammed in as many supports in this situation as I can, but i am now wondering if that is the right thing?

Can you say a bit more about this process? Do you ballast first and then sprinkle on the ash or something different? My wood ash tends to be light grey!

This is excellent, a lovely little layout. I do like how you have made the track look so flowing. I also do a lot a scalescenes buildings and I love them. Very well done.

I think I tend to agree with this, certainly on my home desktop and laptop, the apps are installed locally and so I can use them offline. But when I'm out and about with just my phone, I think I'm using cloud apps and that has never been a problem for me.... At least you know they are always updated. One thing though, at the risk of going off topic, do make sure that all of your data is in the cloud and therefore thoroughly backed up. I pay for Dropbox, it's a fairly small fee and means that not only is my data safe, but I can access it on any device. I am still quaintly charmed to be able to work on something on my desktop then to move to my laptop and just pick up where I left off. It also means that ALL of my data, photos, docs, whatever going right back as far as I want is immediately available on my phone wherever I am. Ian

I have modelled both. Obviously with O you need twice* the space to fit in the same thing. in your space you can fit a decent O gauge small station,but in OO you could fit a mainline. There is far more RTR available in OO, you will find that O gauge can require more modelling as opposed to just buying stuff. O gauge is great. You get better running because of the greater mass of the stock and you can have far more detail today you can actually see. My latest layout would have been O but I wanted to model a main line and have certain elements that o could only fit in with OO. O gauge is more expensive, particularly if you are looking at kits etc. Finally, O gauge is NOT too ambitious for a first time modeller. At one time it was the smallest scale and it was where all first time modellers went! Ian * You need twice the length and width which, of course, means you need four times the space!

Try OpenOffice Google Docs Are you sure you are not eligible for office365 in some way. I have not looked into this thoughly, but it seems to me that you only have to sign up for a free Microsoft account and you can use their apps for free. May not be the whole package though.

My general approach is to be a butterfly and I normally have several projects on the go at once, and i flit between them all. My attention today has been on the level crossing. Here is the general view of the crossing as it currently stands and the signalbox: I intend that each of the four gates will be driven by a servo, all linked (conveniently) to a MERG servo4 module. I have 3d printed servo mounts and made some little connecting pieces that go onto the servo "hub" and screw onto the rod projecting down from the gate post. The flat piece with the two tubes sits on top of the baseboard, the tubes passing through. One tube takes the gate pivot and the other tube accommodates the gate post peg. The gates are the MSE cast whitemetal kit. In another thread i agonised over how to fix the netting on. But I am pleased with the overall look of them. Here are a pair of gates ready for fitting: As to operating them. I have opted to have a separate control desk for the gates adjacent to the crossing. This is a pretty simple affair, but I am rather pleased with the sign. I have found a good online plastic sign engraving company where you can get such signs engraved for very little. I have not yet installed any kind of interlocking and for now will rely on red and green LEDs. I will have to do something though to prevent run throughs I have just started installing the gates will post more later. One question though. The gates need the full 90 degree turn of the servo. the first one is OK, but I have just added the second servo and this is only giving me about 85 degrees "lock to lock". Using the MERG board and the sema4 software to programme it, I have specified the full 90, but one servo isn't doing it. Is this down to individual servos - they are all the same type? Ian

I have solved this now.I did try scalelink (actually now called fretcetera) but I would still have had the same fixing issues. Last night I tried humbrol gloss varnish and the supplied netting. Lightly bushed on and fixed at one end first and when that had dried, fixed the other end and the sides. And I remembered to paint the black ironwork first too. I'll now give an overall light spray of matt varnish and we're done. Just got to mount on the motorising mechanism which is all made and ready to go. I'll post that on my layout thread over the weekend. Ian

Haha yes you've rumbled it. But the sign is in the wrong place and should be on the opposite wall pointing to the right. As it is, the sign does point directly down the steps.

I often see this sign when visiting my daughter. And i always this that its a most unsuitable wheechair access...bump, bump, bump...

Hi John, I am the same as you. I very rarely have derailments. My point was that "standard" RTR wheelsets have flanges deep enough to cope with the inevitable irregularities in the track. And within that I include items like Gibson wheels. But if you want true scale flanges, as in P4, then you need compensation as true flatness in all the variables is impossible (very difficult?) to achieve.

After a lot of thought we bought a elegoo Saturn printer last May. We are using it with elegoo water washable resin and the chitubox (or sometimes lychee) slicer. But it is problematic. Certainly not "out of the box". At the moment I am using it for functional items such as servo mounts and internal fittings in my block bells, but i plan to move to scenic features such as girders, signal lamps, canopies etc. So far it has been a hit and miss affair. sometimes prints work, other times they fail for no apparent reason. This is incredibly frustrating and I am on the verge of chucking it away - but I keep coming back for more. So I have tried to list the variables below and where I am with them. I am grateful for all comments. 1. build plate levelling. This was not a problem, but after a recent failed print I spotted that the build plate had lifted 0.5mm on one side. i corrected this and the subsequent print was good. So now i feel i need to check the build plate before every print. Is this what other do? 2. FEP film: the very first print I did failed and I had model stuck to the FEP. In my ignorance I was too vigorous with cleaning it and I damaged the film. I replaced it and then had to replace again. My current film has visible marks but no holes. I clearly cannot replace the FEP after every print, but how do you know when it needs replacing? I think I have the tension right as i have had some successful prints, yet others that have failed on the same film. 3. settings: After the first initial fails, I changed the settings and had some successes. these are as follows: I have not changed these settings since i started and, as I said, sometimes they work, other times it doesnt. 4. supports: this seems a bit of a black art and I cannot find absolute rules. i tried to print some signal lamps and these failed completely. As the component was so small, i thought it good to switch to "light" supports as opposed to "medium". The light ones have a smaller contact area and I now think that these werent strong enough and pulled away from the model. Is I type, I have switched back to "medium" and we will see what happens. What I don't know is how much support is needed for the inital bit of the component. With my servo mounts, the printer has to "draw" a horizontal line across as the first part of the component and then build subsequent layers on top of that. So now i try and cram in lots of supports on this intial piece. What i don't know is how far a 0.05mm layer of resin can span between supports. The image below shows what I mean - The thin black line is the first layer of the component. How best to support this? 5. pausing. I get anxious and so i occasionally pause the print to see what is happening. I have now read that this can cause problems with failed prints. But I have always done this and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesnt - so I'm not sure if this is a problem or not. 6, temperature - as it has been cold out in the shed, I have brought the printer into the house so it is at normal household temperatures - I live in Somerset. The resin is also in the house and I shake it before pouring into the vat. 7. other things: because of the number of failed prints, I have got into the habit of filtering the resin before each print. I empty the vat, clean it out, polish the glass and refill the resin. Absolute pain to do every time. 8. Too much on the build plate: I have crammed on a lot of things onto the build plate and now i am wondering if cramming things in might cause problems, though I dont see how. In theory I could build one large component the extent of the plate and it should work - so what is the difference with doing lots of smaller ones? After today's failed print I am now trying again with the components thinned out - but they also now have medium density supports, so if it works I won't know which one solved the problem. I cannot think of any more variables for now. So all advice gratefully received. i really want this to work properly but at the moment I am pretty sick and tired of it. Ian