Atlantic's works: Portable layout - Ground Signals Again

[Dave]

Thanks Graeme I have just had a fit of laughter over my office name of El Jobbo the Merciful appearing :
A great day was had by all.

[manna]

G'Day Gents

Very impressive.

manna

[jwealleans]

I have now managed to convert and upload a video I took at the weekend. El Jobbo at the controls, channelling Stirling Moss and clearly in a hurry to get back to York...

https://youtu.be/qQCx9CkbJ0w?si=AyxXPFTQVzI9LlTw

[Dave]

Wow that was a bit fast, onest mi lud it was slower next lap
Thanks for posting
EJTM.

[Atlantic 3279]

Thanks Graeme I have just had a fit of laughter over my office name of El Jobbo the Merciful appearing : :lol: :lol: :lol:
A great day was had by all.

For the keen observer, I notice that the fine scale adjuster (hammer) sneaks in to the associated image too. Always a useful thing to have in reserve.

[Mercator II]

Thanks Graeme I have just had a fit of laughter over my office name of El Jobbo the Merciful appearing :
A great day was had by all.

For the keen observer, I notice that the fine scale adjuster (hammer) sneaks in to the associated image too. Always a useful thing to have in reserve.

I thought that adjuster was called a Grimsby Universal Key!!

[Danby Wiske]

"If in doubt, give it a clout!" was my school DT teacher's motto...

[Hatfield Shed]

When was delirium tremens introduced to our glorious national education system?
I am of the generation which was offered woodwork, metalwork, Technical Drawing, vehicle maintenance, and will always be grateful for my three years of the first three before academia kicked in to high gear, and ten O levels totally filled the timetabled days, apart from 2 hours of PT.

[Danby Wiske]

When was delirium tremens introduced to our glorious national education system?

On reflection, I think it appeared on the timetable as CDT, the C later being dropped when any element of practical skill was removed from the curriculum.

The gentleman in question, though, was definitely a Woodwork teacher, who never quite got his head around the new subject. I don't think he'd ever 'designed' anything in his life - he just got on with making things...

[Horsetan]

When was delirium tremens introduced to our glorious national education system? ...

If only....

[Atlantic 3279]

While you're wishing and waiting Ivan, have a pint...

I think most students are more than capable of finding extra-curricular instruction and/or experience in such matters.

[Atlantic 3279]

A strange visitor to my workbench today, from Immingham museum's trainset, seeking repair. I was daft enough to agree to try...

Two of the insanely flimsy wires connecting the loco to the electrical Devilry in the tender had been torn away from their minute soldered connections under the tender. I'm told that this occurred simply as somebody unaware of the arrangements had tried to take the model out of its box!

The first challenge was to strip the ends of the detached wires, which had naturally broken away leaving no metal core projecting. I tried to melt the end of the casing away with a soldering iron. It wouldn't budge at all, so with the wire supported on a metal block I nervously scraped at the casing with a blade, having no wire strippers anything like small enough. To my immense relief the casing came away and left the metal core intact. I tinned the bare ends of the cores. It was obvious at a glance that the front axle of the tender and the drawbar pin obstructed access for soldering. I popped the axle out carefully, but the pin had to remain. The next apparent requirement, and quite a challenge, was to find a stepped arrangement of stable supports on which I could firmly place the inverted loco and tender without breaking any of the worryingly fine details. Having managed that, I checked that the solder blobs on the two contacts under the tender would actually melt when I applied my iron. That confirmed, with nervously held needle-nosed tweezers I positioned each wire as firmly as possible and prayed as I moved the iron in again. Quite how I got away with it all, I don't really know or believe, but the wires are re-attached, believed to be the right way round. I cannot yet confirm success as I have no DCC supply on which to test the infernal thing! It will have to go home for final testing.
The "big" blue collar around the original slender yellow drawbar pin is a piece of wire insulation that I have added to help to retain the swivelling drawbar on that pin. I hope that will reduce the likelihood of repetition of the damage if somebody tries to pick up just the tender, rather than loco and tender together.

[Atlantic 3279]

Back in February, I had a go at building two GNR pattern ground signals, from some old-stock D Mundy MSE kit parts, to see how I got on.
viewtopic.php?p=150425#p150425

I was sufficiently encouraged by the results to obtain new kits for another half dozen from Andrew Hartshorne. I've put these together in the last three days, using a modified method that works for me in a predictable and repeatable way in order to get what I believe to be an improved appearance with sufficient strength.
The image below shows three stages of evolution of my attempts. The signal on the left was the first I built in February, trying to follow the original MSE instructions as closely as I could. The signal in the middle was the second one in February, after I decided to scrap the idea of soldering in a long single piece of pivot tube above ground level and then sawing out the middle section, as I felt that having the top piece of tube merely butt-soldered to the tiny end of the upper horizontal arm of the bracket was not a sound idea. In that case, I had therefore cut the bracket pieces from the fret in such a way as to make the upper arm initially as long as possible, so that it could be wrapped around a piece of rod to form a ring that would brace the upper part of the spindle beneath the disc/lamp. Doing things that way involved fixing the upright part of the bracket rather closer to the spindle, but that seemed to me to be in keeping with available images a drawings of real GNR ground signals. The signal on the right is my latest version, in which I have tried to make the supporting bracket more like the real thing, with no projection of the upright part above the level of the upper arm, and the lower arm not sitting on the base plate but lifted clear of it. The real things had the pulley that rotated the spindle located below that bottom arm, so the arm should not sit on the base.

Tomorrow perhaps, I'll show the method I used to produce the third version. It required a bit of thought as I had noticed a number of anomalies in the kit parts and both the older D Mundy and the current MSE instruction leaflets, such that the etched parts if used as supplied are not of a shape that will produce the signal as sketched in the leaflet, nor the actual GNR signal shape which is also not quite like the sketch in the leaflet! The instructions in the newer version of the kits are a bit more helpful than the old ones though, and unlike my older kit which seemed to contain just the frets, the newer kits contained the frets, the lamp castings, adequate lengths of tube for guiding and pivoting the spindles, 0.8mm wire for the spindles, and some finer wire for those who want to use that for attaching the balance lever, although I chose to use fine brass pins instead of that.

[Atlantic 3279]

Here we are, as I "sort of" promised, beginning with a look at the MSE sketch compared to the parts, both as supplied and as separated from the fret:

Note that the sketch shows the lower horizontal limb of the assembled bracket in contact with the baseplate, and does not show any extension of the upright parts of the bracket above the upper limb, but if the parts are assembled with the lower limb on the plate, then there is inevitably an upward extension above the top limb. Neither the old or current versions of the instructions say anything about trimming parts off the bracket, nor do they reveal that the real ground signals did not have the lower limb in contact with the base. I wonder if some of this results from the fact that the same fret in the original D. Mundy packaging was supposed to suit LBSCR ground signals too?
I've already opened up holes in the etched parts to suit the tubes / rods / pins that will be used, folded up the etch for the head that will house the lamp (one disc removed, as instructed), shortened the horizontal limbs on one of the bracket pieces (I later shortened them more), cut a piece from the end of the tube for use as a spacer behind the balance lever, also cut a plain strip from a spare piece of the fret, and have added 10mm x 0.5mm brass pin to the parts. I haven't included the supplied piece of 0.8mm round brass rod / wire in the picture.

The image below shows the bracket parts more closely, and that piece of plain strip after forming it around some of the 0.8mm wire and nipping the ends together to produce the shape of a split pin.

In order to provide plenty of length of pivot tube for the vertical spindle, I arranged for it to extend well below the base plate, and to project far enough above that to serve as the eye on the end of the lower horizontal limb of the bracket. I kept things square and well supported ready for soldering by pushing the tube through a 0.8mm hole drilled through a scrap of 9mm ply, and pushing the baseplate down over the top of the tube.

After struggling a few times with various pliers to hold the two forked, slot-together pieces of the upright part of the bracket, it eventually occurred to me that there was much better way to hold the parts square and properly aligned, especially when I had shortened the horizontal limbs, as one end of the assembly would slot neatly into the four slots of one of my small hand-held chucks. Although it's obviously a good heat sink too, it was still possible to solder the exposed end of the bracket assembly, and then turn it around to solder the other end.

The bracket as soldered:

For my modified approach I trimmed the upright's top projection somewhat and then inverted the bracket:

The small hand chuck again seemed like the best thing for holding the bracket upright, steady, and in firm contact with the baseplate (still on its piece of 9mm play) ready for soldering. There was just room to get the tip of a soldering iron in too, so as to achieve decent heat transfer and thus make a joint. I found a convenient little pot, over which I could stand the piece of 9mm ply with the pivot tube projecting down inside the pot.

After sufficiently shortening the "legs" on that split-pin analogue that I had formed, I slid it over a 0.8mm drill bit (lightly oiled as extra protection against solder adhesion) and put the drill into the pivot tube, to line up the loop in the pin with the intended position of the spindle that would support the rotating head of the signal.

The two "legs" were then pushed down, one either side of the much shortened upper horizontal limb of the bracket, and soldered in place before removing the drill bit. As I built more of the ground signals, I realised that the iron did not need to dwell in contact in order to solder this small joint (good job, as I didn't want the other joints to move or detach). There was thus no tendency for the solder to creep into other areas. It was therefore un-necessary to use an oiled steel drill bit to align the parts, one of the pieces of 0.8mm brass wire, just as supplied, worked perfectly well too.

I used the same idea of a 0.8mm hole in the 9mm ply offcut as means of holding the wire spindle vertical while placing the folded-up signal head over the top, thus keeping things square and well supported while I soldered the head to the spindle and soldered up the joints in the head.

Once I get the ground signals finished, fitted, and (with luck) linked up to suitable "digital" (finger powered) operating linkages, I'm sure my prospective fellow operators will be delighted to have 8 ground signals to think about, as well as seven arms on posts. At least there'll be no interlocking, so simple, smooth operation in blatant disregard of signals will be perfectly possible too.

Ah, yes, erm... and I may have to make my final ground signal extra-squat, as I failed to consider it in my earlier planning, and it has to lurk between the track and a platform edge, tucked low enough down to miss loco cylinders, drain cocks, steps and projecting outside axleboxes on passing stock....

[Chas Levin]

Really nice work!