I really didn't want to screw with ballast removal since it meant pulling all the fixtures down from the ceiling. As it is I had to do that anyway with the new fixtures. They're working really great. They're instant on and nothing is buzzing or humming.
I bit the bullet and pulled up the track covers in the engine house. I needed to be able to power engines into and out of the building or the whole deal would be useless. I was certain that the power interruption was due to the filler pieces sticking up beyond the center rail and forcing the rollers out of contact. They came up relatively easily since hot glue isn't the be all and end all of glues. I removed the lumps on the ties, and right now I'm leaving the ties and the little bit of ballast under them intact. I may remove all that ballast and paint the ties to look like concrete ones… or I may not. I did get trains running in and out as they should. I had to clean the rollers and wheels on the Q2 since they were simply not conductive from lack of use. And then my little SW1 Cow and Calf switcher starting running very badly. Badly like one motor was running and the other was stalled.
I took the engine into the shop and quickly diagnosed that something got into the gear train. After disassembling the truck sides and dropping the truck, I found some stones trapped in the main gear. After removal every thing worked as it should. Engines are now in the engine house… as it should be. Next up… doing the landscaping.
On the S-38. I'm waiting for the new solder to arrive. I got my metal supply to make the missing struts. I used the idle time to turn some new prop spinners and designed and grew a fixture that will hold the main struts in proper alignment at their tops while I solder their bottoms to the main wing. I was going to make it out of wood, and then realized that I could grow one.
I was able to use my ball-turning attachment for the Taig lathe to make the nice spherical nose. The models props are wood that were painted to look like metal. I'm in the process of using sanding sealer to remove more of the rough grain before priming them for repaint.
I took the corel draw plans and built the jig on top of it.
My first version is too wide and I found that the slots are only half right. It turns out that the brass struts are 7/32", but the steel ones are 1/4". I now know what the steel struts were. They're key stock because I found steel of the exact same cross-section in my metal supply drawer. I bought this metal at the time I bought the lathe (about 40 years ago). So I went back and adjusted the width (more narrow) and opened up the more acute angled strut (the steel one) to accommodate this. The circular notches are for the twisted floral wire that will hold everything secure.
This is the wrong one. The new one is being grown as I write this. It's amazingly strong.
