I've been working on the harnesses and getting the switches and LED's installed into the panels. For the Tortoise's, I use a 2 legged bi color, red/green in series with the motor. I use 12 volts on them. Then I wrapped the wires. A mess waiting to be installed into the control panel. On the servos, I use 3 legged bi color LED's, red/green wired to one side of a DPDT switch. I tied the center leg together of the LED's and added a 220 ohm resistor. The other side controls the servo via TVD Octopus III drivers. I built a 6.2 volt power supply for the drivers and LED's. Here is west Oroville yard control panel. Still need to get some servos mounted and track laid for the car shop. On the east end I found that I forgot some tracks, so I tried to add them and I messed it up. So I'm doing a new one.
Pretty amazing. Thanks for sharing the knowledge. Hopefully by the time I croak I'll have a tenth of the run that You do Rodney!
Good luck with Your upgrades Buddy! Now I know why You're up until 2 or 3 am. I hope everything works out better than You're hoping for!
You won't have to ask the CEO until He knows that He owns His own railroad! Rodney will let You run the Zephyr!
That would be ok with me. Heck even a local out to work some industries would stir my interest. Someone, here is an electrician or does a lot of work with wiring harnesses. Some nice work. Looking spiffy!
I'm just now getting into N Scale, and my project is a track and railroad for my neighbor boy. Rodney is incredibly busy getting ready for a show. He not only took time out of his busy track work to teach me the ropes, he gave me all of the track for the project, locomotives, and some InterMountain reefer cars. He is not only a wizard with this n scale railroad hobby, He is one of the nicest and most generous people that I've met in years. Just an incredible person.
Thanks Rick, Yea, I've wired a thing or two, but I'm just a dumb ole truck driver. Thanks Wally, but like I told you before, I'm just paying it forward.
I finished Nolan's layout thanks to Rodney and Max. I won't litter Your awesome thread Rodney, but the final layout is on my thread. Rodney, You're not only a genius n scale man, but Your generosity is just an awesome thing. I took away a lot more knowledge about the great people involved in this hobby than I will the satisfaction of doing something nice for my neighbor. I will stay with this hobby, because hanging out with all of you is the greatest place to spend time on the internet. Thanks to You we will make one Cub Scout a very happy kid. He will be on here to say hello some day very soon.
I've been very busy the last few weeks and don't really have much to show for it. I got the rest of the track laid on the the Wye and some track in Keddie Yard just before the convention. It took some grace to for me to get in back there to get the last leg of the Wye laid. Track is in and working on getting some tunnel liners done. I still need to modify them as there are a shade too narrow. The yard track is just temporarily laid for the convention. I'm working on some turnout now so I can go back and finish it the way I want it. Between the tour bus and others that came out on their own, we had about 50 people come out and see the layout. I got a lot of very positive comments and a few are planning on coming back next June for a operating session.
Here is something I did also. I'm using Peco turnouts and had their switch motors on them. I decided to change them out and use servo's. One one end, it was easy cause I had room to take the turnouts out, take the spring and motors off, and then reinstall them. On the other end, I had to take the whole yard area down, where the turnout are. On the floor. And with the servo's installed. And I installed some lights while I had it down.
Trestles look AWESOME. We have a cool trestle in town here, but it's too long, and it took a few kid's lives last year when they tried to outrun a train. The engineer was really broken up about it. Ait's just not fair that those guys are just doin' their job and have to live with the images that are not their fault at all. Zip he would have nailed the brakes a fourth four car train had a hundred feet to drop. One of the kids made it, so he has that to help him a little bit. A keep up the good work Rodney! It looks AWESOME. And Thank You.
Thanks Wally One of my goals is for the railroad is to have a lot of industrial switching so I can keep people busy during OPS sessions. I got a lot of feedback from people at the convention. So with that in mind, I've started changing some trackwork around Oroville. Here is coming out of the helix. Before Now And by moving the backdrop, I'll add a lot of real estate. I'm thinking a scrap dealer, feed and grain store and a warehouse or two. This will be raised and a few wood industries will go in here. When I get all the foam in, I think you'll be able to see and understand a lot better. All of this has changed too. Before Now This grade will continue on through the backdrop
My birthday is next weekend and the wife wanted a gift list from me. So I listed all the stuff that I need to get my laser cutter built. I'm building a 80 or 100 watt laser with a 24" x 48" bed to do 20.3 large scale stuff besides the n scale stuff. I even told her a few times that I might just buy one of those cheap lasers and use it for for now on N scale stuff. But this was before the convention and being that we way overspent there, I told her I didn't want anything else. Well Friday, she really surprised me when a fedex van showed up and he unloaded this Wife made sure I opened it up and checked for damage before the fedex guy left. A cheap 40 watt laser from China. Well the first thing I checked was the mirror alignment as this is one of the big problems with them. It was dead perfect on the min and max movements. Within a few hours I did some trial cuts. Now just need to learn their software. I think once I get the workflow figured out, it won't be too bad.
