woodbine

I have some leftover snippets of 12v LED strip. If I snip it up into elements and pop them into buildings, wired in parallel from a bus and powered by an AC/DC 12v 1.25 amp converter walwart, are there any things to watch out for? Such as maximum/minimum number of units? What might blow the LEDs, burn the house down etc. I think I'm OK, but want to be sure. I don't mind simple yes (with reason)/no.

Doesn't time fly? I realised that though I'd shown the signals being constructed I hadn't yet got around to showing how I made them work, so here goes. In the end I found that they work fine even without a locating plate under the baseboard for most of the signals, except for the combined distant + down starter, which needed more accurate guidance for its two operating rods through the thickness of the station platform plus the baseboard. Here’s an operating rod in action beneath the baseboard, using a digit. The need is to be able to do this from the baseboard edge, and my fingers being no longer than average I decided to use a crank, wire-in-tube, and a DPDT toggle switch, which as previously mentioned in another thread is better able than a sliding switch to withstand the spring pressure from The Gubbins. For the cranks I used ‘nylon cranks and bushes SM8’ from MSE/Wizard Models. I made a locating cup from a slice of square tube and some bent over scrap brass, bolted to one arm of the crank. I fixed the WIT wire to Servo Push Rod Linkage Stoppers , available from Ebay or RC Model Aircraft suppliers. The type I used have an allen key supplied for fine adjustment. The crank was mounted on a cheap and cheerful home-made wooden axle-support bracket, sized bespoke to hold the locating cup at the appropriate height. The cranked axle-support bracket allows the necessary access to the adjustable linkage grub screw when in position. The axle-support was pinned and glued to a ply baseplate, which has two slightly too-large holes for dome-headed screws and washers. This allows for fine positional adjustment to make sure the cup accurately aligns with the signal operating rod. The ply baseplate and crank had to be designed slightly differently for each signal, to avoid obstacles such as point operating equipment and wiring. The toggleswitches are placed where convenient at the baseboard edge, avoiding baseboard joins. A flat was filed and a small hole easily drilled by hand through the soft iron lever, the wire passed through and wrapped around the lever a couple of times. The toggle switches can’t simply be fixed directly to the baseboard edge, I had to make mounts for them as per the photo and drawing. A suitable switch-mounting-hole was drilled in a scrap of 15mm x 15mm (I think) aluminium angle, a tube-support of the same material bolted on the end, and the whole lot screwed to a small block of wood. To save bolts and screws I could have epoxied them all together. The switch was then attached, and the assembly screwed into position inside the hole in the baseboard. (I could even have dispensed with the assembly and epoxied the switch directly - but irreversibly - to the baseboard edge). Wire-in-tube was used to join the lever and the crank. (NB glue on nuts to prevent them unwinding in operation). To avoid sharp height transitions I hot-glued the tube to ramps, made from scrapwood hot-glued into position. It is evident where WIT could have been replaced by servo operation in one of several places, either directly under the operating rod, or moving the crank, or moving the WIT from a distance, but remember that the servo limits the upward travel of the actuating rod, and I think may be harmed by a fixed limiting clamp on the rod. Blu-tac was used to hold the tube in position in the aluminium tube-support. In this picture you can also see a sliding switch and WIT to operate a point. A little bit of tinkering with the Allen key and the wire and there it is, and still works two years later.

If anyone has been wondering whether I came to any conclusions and actually made some signals, well yes I did. I opted for manual operation via wire in tube and it all works surprisingly well, though it ties the operator to a fixed location for each signal (i.e. the particular hole in the front of the baseboard). Had I been younger and with more years to go I think I would have gone for one of the servo methods. I'm glad I made them removable as I can work on the layout without fear of knocking them over. Here's my thread about it.

A further question regarding the text since I have zero knowledge of how these things work. When I try and hatch around the text (which is in red) it merely hatches under it. In order to produce a tool for the front of the sheet the red Front Half Etch layer has to be turned off thereby changing the blue areas to white, but turning off the Text layer makes it disappear altogether. So is the answer simply to simply change the colour of the text to white and leave it switched on? It sounds suspiciously obvious.

I'm back on this after a couple of weeks absence DIY'ing and family stuff. I've got all the parts individually drawn out in their final dimensions and I'm ready to assemble them onto the sheet, but I'd like to get the layers clear in my head. I don't mind if I use more layers than strictly necessary if understanding them helps me in future projects. PPD offer the following :- "Full Thickness Metal - black Halfetch Back - blue Halfetch Front - red Outline Parts - magenta Outline Sheet - magenta Tags - black Text - red Include a mm scale" Presumably that reflects the drawing order. I have it in mind to have Layer 0 as the parts outlines layer (even though DoubleCad won't allow me to call it anything other than "0") A new layer for the frame and tags outlines. Both these layers drawn in magenta according to PPD. Then open a new layer called Full Thickness Metal and solid-hatch in black appropriately. Likewise new layers for Rear solid-hatched in blue, and Front solid-hatched in Red. All this hatching to be done for the whole sheet including frame and tags. (Why do PPD suggest a separate layer for tags? Is this so that they can be toggled between full thickness or half etched according to preference and brass thickness?) Does the centimeter/millimeter rule just get inserted on its own layer, off to one side? And lastly for now, having solved the issue of getting the red text to show up against the black full thickness hatch, how does that get converted to white for the front etching tool?

Thanks J, solved at last. I'd suspected that Draw Order was involved, but the 550 page PDF only has two pretty vague references to 'draw order' and for two days I couldn't locate how to do it. I was on the point of defenestration, but decided to have another look at the 'layers' dialogue box. One of the columns is called simply 'or' and each layer is by default labeled '0'. I changed the '0' to '1' in my text layer and Hey Presto! --- 'or' stands for 'order'. Doh! So searching for 'Order' fetches 66 references as against the meagre 2 for 'Draw Order'. I am following the PPD guides eventually, but first I needed to get the basic workings of Doublecad XT in hand. This was the one holding me at level 1 so I can get on with turning the drawing into a useable file when I understand a little more of the PPD requirements. I think I may change the title of the thread to a more general help request.

First attempt in Doublecad XT at drawing for an etch, and I'm stuck (for several days now) on how to get my text in solid red to show up when I have a solid black hatch/fill. It doesn't matter which layer I put it on nor at what stage I add the fill, the red text disappears from view. Am I using the "wrong" sort of text or what?

No progress in the rolling stock dept, but some fitful progress in the signals dept. This loco is awaiting some upskilling in the paint shop. My unfinished layout was looking accusingly at me so I had to give it some attention.

I have restored the images lost in the '22 Great Server Disaster.

I have revisited this thread and restored all the images that were lost in the April '22 Great Server Crash!

I can't find any reference on here to this problem I'm having. For some time now many/most JPGs in both mine and other peoples' posts from a year or two ago no longer work, and yet some do, on a seemingly random basis. It doesn't seem to be browser dependent. What is the cause of this and what can be done? Do other people have the same problem?

Ground Signals The starting point for these is the MSE GS0010 L&YR Ground Signals kit, single arm pattern, which contains parts for two signals. It represents the earlier, Railway Signal Company, version, which they also supplied to the London Tilbury & Southend Railway. This is OK for me and correct for my model, but the later Horwich L&Y arm should have raised edges and a large counterweight. The cast whitemetal post represents a solid wooden post, compared to the steel H-section of the real thing, but it's so small that it doesn't notice. The balance weight arm is so fine that it is unusable as a working arm, being too fine to take a hole for the operating wire. I tried soldering it to a piece of scrap as a backing reinforcement but gave up and made one from scratch. I drilled the holes first and then cut out and filed to shape. The movement required to operate the signal arm is only a couple of millimetres, so rather than have a single operating rod emerging from the foundation, going through the balance arm in passing, I used the lever principle and brought the rod up from the foundation way back at the balance weight end of the arm. The resulting 2:1 ratio of travel gave finer control over the signal arm. Now there are three joints, which is noticeably slack, it's all so small that it doesn't matter. The signal arm again is very fine. I opened out the holes in the arm for the axle and the operating rod, then opened out the two spectacle holes with a broach as much as I dared. The post is too narrow to take brass tube bearings, so bearing holes were simply drilled through the whitemetal. Nickel silver .45mm lace pins and spacers were soldered to the arms. The cylindrical whitemetal lamp is completely of the wrong sort. All the photos show that it should be square. Later on, when the signal was complete and working, I came to fit the lamp and it didn't fit. The gap between the signal arm and the backblinder (which I had to make myself) should have been increased by adding bigger spacers between the arms and the post to allow for the lamp case. I filed the lamp case square until it fit, so it ended up the right shape by accident! The Gubbins below was made to my normal-by-now pattern, on a slightly smaller foundation plate. After it was all assembled and painted the operating rods were fitted, not without difficulty due to the small size of the whole thing. Well, it works.

The Result I painted it as before, then set about fitting the operating rods. This was quite a lot fiddlier than my previous efforts, consisting of four separate rods. some swearing and brute force was required working in among the railings and other obstacles; I'm amazed and relieved that nothing was broken. Firstly a short rod from the signal arm to the balance arm, then another from the balance arm to the doll crank, the next from the doll crank to the main post crank, and the last one from the main post crank to the 1mm tube rising from the Gubbins. These were all trial and error, and I tried each in turn with sacrificial brass rod until I was satisfied before moving on to the next. A fair amount of motion is lost at each joint but it doesn't worry me. The Gubbins Mk3 is self-explanatory, and the simplest so far. There will be a locating plate and square peg when it is fitted to the layout, but it's not shown here. It all works quite well I think. Again, no glazing or lamps fitted yet as I have not found a way of making the spectacle glazing and I'm loathe to spend upwards of £6 for the two square inches I need for the whole layout! I will experiment with clear glaze and permanent markers. Any suggestions? The next project is the two ground signals. See you there.

3. Bracket Signal. Something more complicated this time. I made some mistakes adaptations due to the difficulty of reconciling the generic instructions for the MSE S0026 signal bracket with the particular signal I had in mind, but I can live with them. The main post is an MSE S0017 20ft tapered whitemetal post, the doll is cut from an MSE S0028 37'6" Timber Signal Post. I should have been more careful making sure that the horizontal platform supporting beams were evenly matched. Each beam is made of two thicknesses of etch folded together, and I couldn't see how the doll support lozenges worked so I cut them off. And had to glue them back on later! I then had to ignore the advice to make sure that the beam tops were level, as the consequent mismatch to the bottom of the beams would have been visible. Later on that led to a bit of fudge when positioning the platform, but nothing dramatic. Here are the posts and beams, with 1mm brass bearings for the various moving bits, and the finials epoxied in position. The real thing would have had pulley wheels, but I chickened out of that and filed a couple of tiny cranks out of some much larger Mercontrol cranks, and soldered in a 1mm bearing. I arranged this before the platform as I needed to know where the operating rod was going through the platform. The balance weight arm needed bulking up and a 1mm bearing inserted. I didn't make a cradle for the arm, I forgot and only just noticed when writing this! No pictures, you wouldn't have liked the mess anyway. The cantilever bracket is straightforward and needs no elaboration, except to say it's fiddly getting it just right. The platform in the MSE part needed cutting down to match my prototype. I used the same technique for the railing as before, with the lace pins and the 6mm balsa sheet. This had to be fitted now, before the cranks and the balance weight arm were put in position. As I was making this I realised that the railing, if continued all round the doll as per the drawing, would foul the balance weight. The only option was to not have it do the full circuit. I'm sure you wouldn't have known had I not given the game away! Here it is before painting The ladder was made as before using my asbestos fingers and yogic breathing technique. Here it is with a coat of Halfords etch primer. After I've painted it and fitted it out, I'll make another post in a day or two to show the operating and underground parts.

I should have included this snippet of the Gubbins in action in the last post. The Signal The extra height needed meant that this time I used an MSE S0028 37'6" Timber Signal Post, with the unwanted height cut off from the top. There are two in the pack so I will use part of the unused one as the doll on my bracket signal, still to come. Again I cleaned off with a file. I keep a poor file just for whitemetal. I find it jams up and ruins them pretty quickly, and I don't know of a way of cleaning them. This signal wouldn't benefit from backblinders as the rear of the starter is not visible from the station signal box, and the distant is blocked from the next box being up against a bridge as it is, but I fitted them anyway . Would this have been an argument for doubling up the signals on a very tall post? Too late now. The balance weight arm is the same as in the Down Home signal except there are two of them. One is slotted from the next box, but is cosmetic only so has been soldered on to one of the other arms. I hope it was the right one (the Distant)! The only other difference from the Down Home built previously, is that this time there are platforms. These I made from scrap. The hand rail stanchions are 0.5mm n/s lace pins and the hand rail itself is n/s wire. I used 0.3mm, but I think it would have been better to use 0.5mm. The pins are c17mm long. I have a scrap of balsa which is 6mm thick, so having drilled the platforms to take the stanchions, it was easy to pin them to the balsa leaving a level 10mm of each pin sticking up above the platform, taking care to get them vertical. Having soldered them into the platform it is all left in place on the balsa while the handrail is bent around and soldered under the pinheads. Keeping it all pinned to the balsa stops it all from accidentally falling apart when the heat travels down the pin and remelts the solder at the platform. The heads were filed a little to remove some of the bulk, and the unwanted pins snipped from the underside of the platform. This is then soldered to the post with an angle made of scrap (you can't see this). The top platform is a little too far up so I had to shorten the backblinder to accommodate it. Painted and all joined up and sprung as before, here is arear view. The camera has done something to the black, which is not like that really. And here it is in action.

2) Down Starter + Distant The Gubbins Mk 2 Some changes here, so a bit of detail. This time for the baseplates I used some 0.9mm brass that I have, as it doesn't deform while it's being drilled and filed. I also increased the size from 15 x 30mm to 20 x 40mm. I countersank the screw holes after this pic. To prevent the springs of the two rods interfering with each other I separated them by mounting them on either side of a 0.9mm brass plate. I arranged for them to pop out of the ground closer to where I needed them. It may be that two rods is close to the limit of this system, but I don't need to worry about that. To the right you see the Gubbins MK2 mounting plate, in the centre is the tube that the signal post will be epoxied into, and on the left is the locating tube, which locates over the under-baseplate tube, just visible in the next pic. I decided to separate the bottom ends of the two operating rods, to allow space for whatever pushing mechanism ends up down there at some future date. This meant that I had to crank one of them out of the way. I could have kept the operating springy bit straight, and instead put the crank at the bottom, but I've only just realised that! On my previous signal I had used adjustable wheel collets to limit the operating rod movement, as I was not confident as to how it would work out. This time there was going to be not enough room to do this on two rods so I decided to use scraps of brass soldered on (messily, but it worked!). The adjustment of the spring compression was again by trying different sizes of scrap. All I needed to do was pinch it on, but I forgot, and soldered it messily instead. The above ground stuff will be in the next post.

Painting and finishing off. The conventional wisdom is to spray with Halfords Matt White, but I just used what I already have, Halfords Etch Primer Grey, then thinned coats of Vallejo white brushed on until even, followed by the black. The arms then brush painted red, using little bits of Tamiya masking tape to keep a white stripe and to protect the backs. Easy peasy. At this period the L&Y Distant Signals were red with a vertical white stripe. A chevron would have been a bit harder I suppose, but didn't appear till after 1908. The Tamiya masking tape is very good, easy to work with a scalpel and lets nothing bleed past the edge. I'd forgotten to order some spectacle glazing from MSE, so I've left it off for now until I can get hold of a substitute. I only need a couple of square inches for the whole layout. I can't mount the lamps until the glazing is in. I then "pinned" on some thin oil for luck and tested it. Being sprung it has to be screwed down to a base or it will just rise up out of the ground of course. The screws are the smallest I could find and they look awful. Hey ho.

Above Ground MSE SOO13 has sufficient arms for 15 signals, of which I will be using the four earlier Raynar Wilson arms. I cleaned them up, removed them from the etch, and soldered 0.5mm n/s axles to them. Each one also has a back blinder which I fixed later on when finally assembling the signals. The Wizard Models website search engine, source of the MSE parts, I didn't find easy to use but eventually provided myself with an S0017 pack of two 20ft tapered whitemetal posts (one each for this signal and the bracket signal). I cleaned up the casting with a file and removed the unwanted arm and balance weight castings, replacing them by drilling through the post and soldering in 1mm x 0.5mm brass tube, leaving 1mm sticking out at each side as packing. The signal arm pivot point presents a problem. To get the signal lamp against the post and in the right place for the spectacle needs the pivot to be on the left face of the post, like the one I had just filed off! But if I did that it still wouldn't line up with the lamp, and the hole for the actuating rod would be had to get to for fitting. So I just put it a little off centre to the left and I'll put the lamp a bit further out. I soldered on a bracket made from scrap for the lamp. I couldn't work out where it was really meant to be, so I soldered the arm stop to the left face of the post, judging its position relative to the arm. It ended up a little low, so I was able to file it until the arm was held horizontal. The balance weight arm is OK with the pivot in the centre, and the hole for the actuating rod is left nicely clear of the post. I made up the cradle from a section of square tube as the one provided on the etch looked unlikely. Beware, if the bottom of the cradle is too wide it may restrict the rocking movement of the arm. The balance arm looks flimsy so I beefed it up with some scrap and soldered some 1mm tube in as a bearing. Then I pinned it all to the post with 0.5mm n/s. It looks pretty bad close up, but painted black it's not too bad. I hope. Now that the major work to the post had been done, I drilled a hole down the top of the post with a pin vice, and epoxied the finial into position, from MSE SC0013. This first needed filing to a point for the L&Y. It was a delicate job to get it epoxied straight, but when properly set (the next day), I filed the bottom of the post enough to let me epoxy it into the base plate, then I soldered on a MSE LS007 dummy signal wire pulley wheel as decoration. This post has no platform. The ladder is made up from a MSE S009/7 23ft signal ladder, tinned all over and the side rails toughened up with 0.3mm n/s, aided by calming yogic breathing and my asbestos fingers. Actually not too hard once you get it going, and it cleans up convincingly. The feet are soldered into holes in the base. The supports half way up the ladder are 0.5mm wire, filed flatish after fixing. It's surprisingly sturdy. In these pics you can see the lump I added to the baseplate for the fixing screw!

The Gubbins Mk1 The actuating rod below deck, and projecting a little above, is 1mm x 0.5mm brass tube, into which the above-deck 0.45mm n/s rod to the arm is soldered on final assembly after painting. It runs freely in brass tube two sizes up (2mm x 1.5mm), except for about 5mm of 1.5mm x 1mm soldered into the last bit of 2mm tube up to ground level, which will hopefully keep grot, ballast, paint, dust and grime from bunging things up. Up to this point I had not formed an opinion as to where it should pop out of the ground, and it turned out to need a fair old dog leg in the above-deck 0.45mm rod to get it to the right place on the balance weight arm. I needed a way to limit the travel of the actuating rod. I thought little wheel collets would be ideal, as they are easily adjustable by a tiny grub screw. They were not easy to source (model RC aircraft suppliers sometimes have them) and when they arrived they were bigger than I thought they would be, but were still able to be accommodated by a cut-out in the tube as expected. I then realised that I could have used sawn-up choc box connectors to the same effect, though with a slightly larger baseboard hole. Returning the signal to danger by gravity is too much to leave to chance, so springing is provided. Later I tried hanging weights off the rod and confirmed my suspicions. I also experimented off site with the force needed to defeat either a sliding switch as used successfully for my pointwork, or a toggle switch with a hole drilled through the arm. I concluded that any decent spring could easily overcome the sliding switch but not the toggle switch. I also didn't know how much springing was going to be needed, so I erred on the side of caution and provided two coil springs of the W&T SA20 Smiths Coupling Springs Steel (20) variety. These are a loose fit, and can be compressed to the right amount by trying various sizes of spacer. The spacer is simply a piece of scrap pinched around the rod between the collet and the spring. This could only be fitted after everything was painted and assembled. Sorry about the blurry phone pic, it wouldn't focus.

1) Home Signal Here's a video of the happy ending The operating system was the biggest concern so I started with that. What I need is a rod to move up and down a few millimetres, and for it to be capable of being withdrawn without having to disconnect anything from below. Consequently it needs to be replaceable in exactly the same position upon replacement, with no adjustment required. After a bit of work with pencil and paper I concluded that telescopic square tubes could be employed for positioning. They would also provide a rigid support for the actuating rod, and something to securely epoxy the signal post into. The Baseplates I used 0.5mm n/s sheet, which I now feel is too flimsy. The prototype base plate used in this my first signal has the following features. The main descending tube (3/16th K&S Brass Square Tube) is open at the top to take the signal post, which is epoxied in, and long enough below deck to support the Operating Gubbins (of which more later). There is a second square tube next to it, the locating tube, which slots over the next-size-down telescopic tube, which projects upwards from the under-base locating plate. This under-base locating plate can be any convenient size as long as it performs this one function and doesn't get in the way of anything else. Initially I didn't make the top baseplate large enough to cover the hole and leave something to screw to, so later on I had to add a bit! Messy.

L&Y Signals in 4mm As with everything else on my slowly emerging first and only layout, Woodbine Grove (Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway 4mm EM), I have no previous expertise in making signals. Therefore it may be entertaining to record my progress and point out what I would do differently next time. The signals I need are a 1) Home, 2) Starting Signal with a Distant below, 3) Starting Signal on a bracket, 4) + 5) two Ground Signals. I am using mostly MSE components. Construction techniques for the signals themselves are covered elsewhere on this forum by others more qualified than I, so I will only mention clarifications where I think they are needed. The operating mechanism side of things is a different matter, and caused me a lot of bafflement, so much so that I started a forum thread to try and sort things out in my head. That thread is HERE. https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/160610-model-signal-operating-mechanisms/ I am still undecided whether to go servo or purely mechanical, so I want a system that will allow me to make that decision at a later date. I may end up trying five different approaches, which you might find fun. It seemed a good idea to be able to remove them from the layout without too much fuss, just as I have made all my buildings removable. This will have to be done without bumbling around from below, as it is not easily accessible. I hope some will find something of interest in the posts that follow.

Back on topic, I'm sure I've seen it mentioned here somewhere but 51 pages is too much to recap. Can I ask how you would fix a brass signal arm pivot tube into the centre of a whitemetal post? I am a little hesitant to go in with solder but prepared to give it a go. Likewise the balance arm of course.

You mention the "little operating coil". Do you mean something like this https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/12V-DC-suction-micro-electromagnet-spring-push-pull-type-rod-solenoid-magne-jk/353310843027?hash=item5242f7a093:g:0mUAAOSw1vxckx8P ? So if I understand correctly it is a solenoid with the armature sticking out both ends, one end sprung, forcing a return when power is off, which return is then limited by a plate? What limits the throw when the power is on, is it a collar on the operating rod?

Well yes, there are plenty of sg90 servos for sale at quite low prices, but they may not be Tower Pro (or one of the other major brands). Some may be good clones and some may be counterfeit and not so good. No doubt you pay a premium for a trusted retailer (by which I mean a specialist who has a reputation to uphold) to stock and sell the brand that leads the market, but the OP asked if there were particular makes that were most used. By the same token that retailer may be able to suggest a cheaper good clone. But there isn't a fortune riding on it either way. A dud clone can be binned at £1 if it doesn't work.

From what I've been able to gather you can't go wrong with Tower Pro sg90 (ca£3.30), Hobby King hxt900 (ca£2.65) and there are others. But there are plenty of lookalikes and downright fakes out there so get them from a reliable source, who may be able to suggest others. Don't be tempted by cheapos. There are even smaller ones if you need , but have regard to the specs.