Gone camping

One of my favourite ways to escape for a weekend has always been camping by the sea. Since I was on my own this weekend, and it's been a while, I decided to spend a night under the stars. So I dug out my camping gear, loaded up the wagon, and set off for Utrainia's Coastal Highway.

I found a good spot to pull off, parked the car and gathered up my gear. After half an hour or so of clambering around the coastline I arrived at a nice quiet wee spot. I found a nice sheltered spot and pitched my tent. And as luck would have it I was right next to the mainline!

I fell asleep listening to the waves crashing into the shore, occasionally interspersed by clickety clacking as a train went past.

The next morning I rose bright and early to the fresh sea air. After breakfast I grabbed my book and camera and found a nice spot where I could comfortably read and watch the trains go by. There wasn't a whole lot of traffic, just the regular express commuter service every half hour and a few freight trains.

I must be a beautiful view from the train.

Evening came and I didn't have any dinner, so I packed up camp and headed back to my car. I took a few other photos while there which I will post when I get a chance.

Making a tent

I made the master for my tent from plasticine, forming it with a scalpel. The poles were made from very thin wire, shaped around a pen barrel. I used an N scale figure (who appears to be wearing a dressing gown?) to get the scale about right. I modeled it after my own little blue tent.

Then I made a negative from silicone, before casting the positive from urethane resin. I had hoped to put an LED inside to make it glow at night, but the resin is too opaque. However I do have some clear epoxy resin...

Once painted I planted it in the scene and it was ready to tell a story. I just need to add a small burnt out campfire now.

Other news

Utrainia has been taking a bit of a back seat lately as I work building tools. Last week I built a drill press, which is now doing great service helping me build a computer controlled (CNC) router. I am still waiting on bits to arrive for the router, but I am making good progress.

My rocky scene is progressing slowly. Every few days I'll pluck up the motivation to carve yet some more rocks. The rockfall shelter is starting to take shape, however I need lay and ballast the track, and paint the rocks before installing it.

I've also been doing some work on my Arduino C/MRI project. This is a bit of software that connects my laptop, running JMRI, with my model railway. The computer and railway use DCC to communicate, however DCC only controls the trains. To connect sensors and signals I use an Arduino (a small programmable micrcontroller) which then uses my Arduino C/MRI software to talk to JMRI on my laptop. It does this by pretending to be a different piece of hardware, since that is what JMRI supported.

One of the more practical uses of this is to speed match locos. Since each loco is different, they all run at different speeds. By using JMRI and an automatic speed matching script, I am able to automatically calibrate each loco to the same profile. It does this with a couple of sensors connected to the Arduino to determine when the train has passed a point. The software then determines the actual speed of the train, versus the desired speed, and makes the appropriate adjustment to the loco's speed curves.

This is a fairly slow process, requiring the loco to run uninterrupted for around half an hour or so while it slowly converges on a desired profile. Unfortunately certain furry helpers of mine had different ideas!

Back in the garage I am continuing to cast window assemblies for my skyscrapers. I am hoping that once my CNC router is up and running that I can use it quickly mill up building facades; Utrainia needs a city after all!

That's all for today; many finger in many pots it seems. Looking forward to seeing some progress over the next few weeks though, and hopefully one day I will have finished carving enough rocks!