Well... a rare Saturday session since I really needed to get that switch fixed and wanted to put the finishing touches on this phase of mountain construction. The next time I'm in the basement it will be to clean up the floor.
First thing I did was ballast all the new track. Typical process:
- Pour ballast between the rails and spread it forward with an old paint brush
- Pour ballast on the edges over the roadbed and brush and shape so roadbed is hidden and tops of the ties are clean
- Spray area with "wet water" which water/alcohol and a few drops of dish detergent
- Soak area with W-S Scenic Cement out of a small nozzle.
- Let dry overnight and go back and secure any loose areas.
Where the mine's going to go I added some dark stuff to the mix since that area will be covered with spilled coal.
Lastly I did the new switch. Notice, I do not ballast in the area where the points are.
Next I realized that I needed to add the missing fascia so I quickly did that. It really finishes it off. It will be painted the forrest green (of course), but that will happen another day. When I built all the existing fascia I used Masonite splice plates held together with screws and nuts. It was overkill. In this case I just put some Titebond glue on the joint plates and temporarily clamped till set. There's little or no stress on the fascia so I use very small Phillips head #2 screws. Space on the right will be fully landscaped in the next phase.
I added another piece that finishes off the yard end. Look closely and you can see that horrendous floor.
So here's all the work completed so far with all the extraneous crap removed. The three yard tracks in the foreground are where the large engine house is going. I'm working on the final planes for that. Still not sure if I'll have it laser cut by Andre or use some other method. It's going to be quite big, have a ton of windows and I want it to be brick. That 2 X 4 you see sticking up in the background was that extra support I installed to stabilize the working board I was relying on to reach the difficult parts of the mountain. Hard to believe that beast is just cardboard.
While all this was drying, I got back to work trying to make a working Z-1000 switch machine for the switch that's just in front of the left front portal. Since I was having so much trouble getting it back together I thought I take a fully functional machine from a little-used yard switch and install it back there since that's a critical location. Seemed like a prudent way to go and then buy a new machine to replace the one in the yard. Remember what Clausewitz said, "Strategy is over the minute the first shot it fired." This strategy was over when I tried to pull the three-wire pigtail out of the hole in the layout and ripped all three off the circuit board in that yard switch machine. It seems that all three wires were plastered solidly into the hole in the platform since the plastering in the yard was all done after track was installed. I almost had to chisel the remains of the wires out of the hole. Hydrocal is very strong and hard when fully set.
So now I had two defunct switch machines. I knew that the one in my hand was a good one so all I had to do was re-solder the wires back onto the board. Hmmm.... seems like I was at this same place yesterday. This time I was going to be smart by photographing the guts before removing anything.
It was a brilliant idea to take this picture. Too bad I was too stupid to refer back to it. In looking at it now I realized that I, a) had that white motor wire reinstalled from the bottom up instead of how it's here exiting the board out of the top, and b) I think I have the microswitch upside down so the lever is on the bottom instead of top as it is here.
That's why after screwing around with it for a half hour, it still worked poorly when on the railroad. And this was a good one.
As it did the last time, at least four existing wires broke in simply handling all the parts. The white motor wire broke off the board. And the wires on the microswitch also broke. Their little, short wires and are very hard to re-strip. I believe these wires are breaking since they are cheap, 2-strand Chinese wires that are too brittle. The wires I'm using to replace them have at least a dozen fine strands and are very flexible. In the motor wire's case I made a new one, but I soldered it into the board from the bottom. This caused trouble getting the wire out from under the board. I should have realized something was wrong—and checked this stupid picture—when I couldn't get the green LED back in its socket because the green wire was running directly beneath the holes. I moved it out of the way, but still had it coming from the wrong way. The other clue was not having enough room for the LED current limiting resistor since with the microswitch upside down, that resistor was now right next to the motor and there wasn't much room for it. I think I'll put that machine and rearrange stuff correctly. I'm slowly getting good at this, but it's a very painful learning experience.
More troubles happened when the connecting spring from the machine to the throw bar disappeared into the quantum rift. But luckily, Ross had sent me a bag of these puppies years ago when I had lost one. For the now missing yard switch, I installed a Caboose Industries ground throw so at least the switch can be maintained in a specific direction.
Oh... and I lost a green LED from the machine when I forgot to remove them and popped the circuit board up. When that happened the LEDs went out forcibly. I found the red one, but the green is not in this dimension any longer.
I don't give up easily and am going to try and secure that pinion gear on the other machine and rebuild it correctly and see if it will work. New one cost $26 plus shipping. While it's not a bad idea to have a spare or two around since they're so critical, I'd like to need them because they wore out, not that I've broken them.
All in all, the mountain looks great, but the rest of the day was an exercise in frustration.
