building

Wiring and lacing

Mt Adams continues in leaps and bounds...

Last update on Mt Adams, I had been busy with paper mache. Since then the whole lot has had a good coat of browny paint from our top secret strategic stockpile of test pots. The double crossover has been mounted and I've designed some laser-cut servo-based point motor mechanisms that are recessed into the plywood base (so they don't foul the polystyrene scenery base).

The upper station has had its track laid, as has the upper tunnel.

Yesterday I finished placing all the remaining trac...

The COBOL building

A slight detour as I build something of a "tribute" to one of my favourite blogs...

Recently while reading 30 Squares of Ontario, JD's FORTRAN building popped up. I've always admired the building; something about its shape and simplicity. Plus I liked the name. So I decided to build my own interpretation of it; helpfully, JD included his drawings and enough dimensions that I could easily make my own in N scale.

After a quiet evening with Inkscape (plus a little Ruby scripting to generate randomly opened window blinds) I came up with my working drawings:

I have my workflow nicely set up now, so that black lines are c...

Paper mache time

Mt Adams lurches back into high gear again...

Trackwork

Believe it or not but the double crossover is now complete!

I've cut the electrical gaps in the right (I hope) places, and it passes the multimeter tests. All that is left is to solder on the the throw bars and glue it down!

Fascia

After deciding to make the fascias after doing the scenery, I proceeded to change my mind and make them first. With so many tunnels though, I needed a way of getting inside them to clean track, rescue trains, etc. So I needed some little access panels. Now I could painstakingly cut them out by hand, however with a high power laser sitting in town, it was obvious which way I would go! So last Friday I popped down w...

Double crossover progress

Mt Adams continues...

Progress may have slowed, but I'm still moving forward. My double scissor crossover has had a few more rails soldered in place. It is slow fiddly work, but as long as I measure everything five times and cut very carefully... well so far no mistakes.

That said, I have had to desolder a few rails and file off a bit more to make point blades sit nicely, but that is ok. So to sum up...

Point blades: 4/8 made. Check rails: 3/8 made. Diamond rails: 1/4 made. Diamond check rails: 0/4 made.

More trackwork

Progress in Utrainia has shuddered to a virtual standstill, as the work/life balance takes a beating...

A major new contract this last week with some very tight deadlines has seen Utrainia take a backseat this week. In fact for most of the week Mt Adams has sat forlorn on the table waiting for me to give it some attention. Finally the last couple of nights I've managed to dedicate a few hours. This week (month?) the focus is on the last remaining trackwork, which involves making a double crossover. This:

Yikes. First step as ever is to print out the track plan and stick sleepers on to it. Then I spent about 3 weeks staring at it trying to work out the courage. And finally earlier this week I started cutting rail. I've started with the outside rails first, then...

Making tunnels

Tunnel building time here at Mount Adams this weekend...

Took a little bit of a breather this weekend while I pondered the next steps on my mini railway. I decided that tunnels were fairly high up on the list, as once scenery is in, it is too late to think about tunnels. So... I designed a tunnel mouth on Inkscape to laser cut, and thought a bit about the inside of the tunnel. Normally I just leave them plain, but since the tunnels are quite short and visible on this railway, it might be nice to have the insides looking like a proper tunnel.

So I laser cut some templates out of more old cereal boxes and started cutting out polystyrene. After a few false starts, here is my technique:

1) Rip some dimensional polystyene

Using Mr Hotwire 4000 and a guide rail, I "ripped" a sheet of polystyrene foam down to 40x70mm lengths.

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