June 2019 update

Well June went by fairly quickly. My knee is better, but there's still this nagging pain in my lower leg, that doesn't want to go away. Seeing a different doctor on Tuesday, probably get some different images beyond x-rays, so we can finally figure out what's causing it. It sure would be nice to walk without pain for a change.

My son is back in Minnesota tonight. He gets his new apartment in the morning. He got his transfer at Best Buy, so he's set for a while.

I spent quite a bit more time working on the layout this month, and Patrick was over three times. We worked on a couple major projects, and a couple minor ones too.

Here's one of the minor projects. Patrick took sheets of cardboard, and closed up the embankment behind East Minneapolis and the Roseville hill.

Early in the month when my leg was really hurting, I entered this pile of trains into the computer, so I could have my wife make car cards.

One of the major projects that is nearing completion is the skirting. This is aisle four, so close, but not quite done.

Patrick finished this aisle...

then added these hooks to hod the step benches in the up position.

Then back to aisle three to deal with this tricky spot.

Here's another interesting section, which follows the ramping floor at the end of peninsula three.

Finally, a short skirt to complete peninsula two.

On to the other major project, getting the uncouplers operational. There are multiple steps in this process. This is an idea that Gunrunnerjohn came up with. It uses a capacitive touch sensor which drives a relay, so when you touch the carriage bolt head on the fascia, you power the uncoupler coil. Here's my first batch. Using 1/4" tape I laid out the track diagram, then drilled for the bolts.

While I was at it, I marked the switch controls for this area.

We determined that it was necessary to use a shielded cable to transmit the touch back to the electronic board. The ring end goes to the bolt, the spade end to the terminal block on the board, and the butt splice gets a lead back to ground for the shield. Each uncoupler will need one of these, some short, and a few very long, maybe 7 or 8 feet.

I'm getting better at making these, but they still take a while.

This is the panel for Red Wing.

A close up of how the cable attaches, washer, ring, washer, lock washer, nut.

I had to enlarge the hole in the benchwork at Red Wing to get the cables through.

Here it is seated over the hole.

It's not easy to avoid obstacles behind the fascia. It is more important that the visible part be neat, so I just use bolts of various lengths.

These are polyfuses with but splices crimped onto their legs. A polyfuse is just a circuit breaker that should prevent the coils from overheating. These will be placed in the wire between the relay and the coil.

Patrick wires up the Ford Plant panel.

It wasn't easy getting eight tracks taped onto the fascia.

We moved over to Roseville to work on uncouplers. I taped out the track plan and drilled the holes. I didn't notice that there was a mounting block for a Tortoise behind the upper hole.

Patrick nearly panicked, but I just took the chuck key, and moved the bit out as far as I could, and kept drilling through the block, til the tip of the bit popped out the back. You can just see it on the left side of the block. Then I bought some 5" bolts.

But there was a bigger problem that I hadn't noticed. I drew the track diagram incorrectly. Without re-drilling the holes, I went back today and fixed that. It's quite different from the picture of the drill sticking out of the layout above.

This is just a picture of the work zone. we have four of the six Roseville wires in place. Two are connected to the controller block, and two are ready for Patrick to connect.