building

Rachel's Building gets a proper sign

When I was building "Rachel's Building" for Raparapa, I didn't have time to make a proper sign for the building front and instead just stuck on a sheet of paper!

Of course a girl like Rachel deserves a far better sign, so today I did something about it.

I started by making up a sign in Inkscape and then exporting it as a DXF file. I imported this into Meshcam and turned it into a 3d shape. I then converted it into some GCODE, a process that took about 10 minutes of pure number crunching.

Then I made up a small mold from some styrene and filled it with resin. I let this set, cleaned it up, and loaded it into my CNC machine. I set the origin to the corner, loaded in a 0.1mm engraving bit, and clicked GO.

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Adding signals to the snow scene

Continued back story of my snow module...

I also poured the small lake/puddle using epoxy resin, heated slightly in a water bath to get it to flow better and let any bubbles escape. This was finished with some stippled matt varnish to give it a textured icy look. Not perfect, but ok from a few feet away.

Time to make up another batch of trees. My "endless" supply of sisal rope is quickly coming to an end!

Here is the module at the end of the evening:

Time to plant the other signal. I prepared it by gluing on t...

I must be crazy

It seems that I just can't get enough of hand laid turnouts! Which is odd, because it's a pretty tedious process making them. And yet, here I am, a month later building a crossover for Raparapa. Now that trains are running, the Operations Dept has been fairly vocal about how inefficient the current system is. With a small crossover at Raparapa, they argue, trains on the second track would no longer need to reverse half the length of the country to get back onto the first main line. A fairly compelling argument I have to admit, so with that in mind I fired up the computer and drew up a template for the crossover.

Templot to the rescue again, which means about 3 minutes of drawing the turnouts, another 3 hours adjusting the sleeper spacing in 50,000 different dialog boxes, and then another 3 hours trying to convince it that just because I have a black and white printer, doesn't mean I shouldn't be forbidden from changing any of the export options. But at long last I ha a 1:1 ...

Closing the loop

Big day here in Utrainia, and the result of many days work. First of all though, a little bit of background...

While building the bridge module I could feel that I was very close to making a complete loop of modules, all I needed was this and one more corner module. At that point I realised I had another corner module, my previous base for the bridge module. So I had the required number of corners, however neither had track, and it would take me a while to complete the bridge scene. I felt frustrated that I was so close, yet so far.

Then it struck me that I could cheat a little... if I tacked down some track on each module, they could act as stand-ins until I got around to completing them. Hmm...

So that night I quickly made up a pair of spacer modules. The first one I just put down some track over the existing foam, on the second one (the new bridge module) I made some joists out of 3mm MDF and a tack base from some foam board. End result was two corner modules...

Birth of a new module: the viaduct

Taking a break from the city module, I decided to work on the long-delayed bridge module. So far I've made up two towers and made a rough start on the module itself. However I was finding the existing module a bit restricting, so after a bit of brain storming, decided to make a fresh start.

A plan was quickly devised and then construction started. This module is a new style for Utrainia, having a smooth curved fascia, and being of a monocoque form, where the fascia forms the structure itself. Enough talking though, it's time to assemble the materials:

6x 300mm 45x20mm knotty pine spacers 4x 260mm 45x20mm knotty pine verticals 2x 300x150mm 12mm ply ends 1x curved 3mm MDF base

Pairs of verticals were connected to...

Growing legs

Work on the city scene continues. On Friday I soldered the ends of the track to a strip of PCB material that was securely attached to the module. This means the track is now well attached, but the alignments can be subtly tweaked when required. Here you can see the cork base butting up against the 5mm MDF strip across the ends, and the PCB material on top of that.

That means the basic track laying is now complete!

Saturday saw the module relocated to the garage and the dining table rediscovered. On Sunday I put on my worker hat and started building legs for the module. Here you can see them being positioned and attached. I used a slightly different system for these legs, with some large triangles of ply to give it strength and rigidity. Due to the tight confines under the ...