Postus interruptus! You guys are too much, giving praise for a 1/2 finished post. I had to stop writing last night and, due to he forum's habit of timing out after an idle period and losing the pictures, I chose to post it incomplete and finish this morning.
My arm's a little sore this morning, but nothing notable. It's the booster that seems to give the most ill-effects on the 2nd day. It's worth it!
I didn't glue the parking sign into the layout. The base is wide enough and solid so it stays ok un-glued. I still have to create and attach the parking bumpers, and then there's that retaining wall. I've gone through at least five different approaches in my head trying to find one that's, a) decent looking, b) not too much $$$ and c) buildable. The curve really throws me a "curve" so to speak. It makes all the fence options more complicated. I'm now thinking about a couple of 1/8" Masonite strips laminated together to form a curved "concrete-looking" retaining wall. Best of all, I have all the materials in the shop and don't need to go shopping for anything. I could also shape a "concrete" form out of clay and pour hydrocal into it. The challenge with that method is keeping a uniform wall thickness. In the real world, concrete forms have tie bolts that run across the form and they leave those tell-tale holes in their place. The other problem with this is controlling any hydrocal leakage out the bottom. The subsurface is very irregular. It's why the Masonite solution seems to be the most practical. And it can easily bend around that radius.
Here's some more images showing the finished installation. There's the 2nd parking machine next to the sign.
You can see some more of the weathering on the base in this image.
The curb's a little high, but as you can see in the Saulena's/Idaho sidewalk junction, it's just a tad taller than Saulena's and removing a 1/8" filler piece would have been too much. I would have had to laminate some strathmore make it exact and, obviously, I didn't want to do that. There's also a lot of flexibility in the green foam and Masonite below it. Even with the new base solidly glued to the green foam, it's still got give.
I also finished 7 DIY LED driver boards. The difference in my construction approach between the first and last is pretty dramatic. I got it so I can solder one of these together in about 15 minutes. All the soldering is done with the RSU.
The first attempt:
And here's number 7: I found that I needed to have that large copper conductor actually touching each leg of the LED driver chip to ensure that it was a good conduction path. I found that soldering the driver just to the foil wasn't giving a good contact. I test each circuit with an LED before attaching the servo mounting tape underneath.
Here're all seven ready for installation today. I know it seems like overkill, but these allow each light pole to be easily pulled from the railroad with a small straight screwdriver. I really, these should have been actual little circuit boards with lead attachment fittings on them. I looked for something, but it would have cost $$$ and these cost me nothing. I had all the stuff sitting around the shop. Those Euro-style connectors came in strips of 12 with a female half. I originally used them to create the barrier separators for the subroadbed panels on the first German iteration of this railroad. I enabled me to separate all the wiring cleanly, and reassemble same back in Pennsylvania.
For the big ground jumper, I realized quickly that none of this needed insulation since nothing could move into contact with anything else, thus bare conductors. Even that heavy copper is old German wiring. I know this because they use blue and brown insulation to denote hot and neutral.
Today I'm going to be installing more street lights and getting all the new lighting systems powered up. I will be under and over the layout all afternoon.
