Oh, Radar O'Reilly!! For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what you were saying. It took me like four days to figure that out.
I finished half of the signals for the Graham control point. On the real Ottumwa Sub, this is where the subdivision starts on the East end and it's actually 3 tracks here with two headed to Chicago and one to the Galesburg yard. I still have more work to clean this up and add details but I like that I now have a signal over here. It's about time I get signals here; I only built the #16 crossovers 27 years ago (for a different layout, in a different state). I was going to do the West end of Graham next, but I had glued the top bracing on the signal bridge. So I decided to move that bridge to Lucas because it would be easier to get those signal in from the end. After hours of what felt like building a ship-in-a-bottle, I finally got to the "test the lights" step. I'm pleased with how it's going to turn out. Again, this is another place I've really been wanting to get signals working. This is the bottom of the West Burlington hill and was often referred to as "The Pickle Works" because a hundred+ years ago, there was a pickle factory here started by a German immigrant. And of course, a real picture of the real Lucas signal bridge for reference (from the other side, take from the Mt Pleasant St bridge).
Yeah, the only time I have heard of Ottumwa, Iowa outside of this thread was in an episode of MASH, probably at its original airing.
I got the signal bridge for the West end of the Graham crossover complete and installed. I'm pleased. I had a yellow that wasn't working on the other end so I got to investigating. After replacing a signal head and jumping some wires (and melting a cross brace), I'm still scratching my head. I may need to dig out the oscilloscope to really understand what's going on. I'll figure it out eventually but right now nothing makes sense - the fun of hardware/software development!
I'm sure you'll find out the root cause Meanwhile, I am enjoying the great work on that signal bridge. Great job.
I found the root cause - poor workmanship! I had a short on the yellow to Vcc, though I don't know how it bugged out ok multiple times. The new pin I moved it to was stuck high so it couldn't turn the yellow on. Finally the connector under the bungalow wasn't fully soldered so power to the whole bridge was intermittent. I ended up just hooking the yellow up to power and ground (with a resistor of course). When I turned it on nothing happened for five or so seconds and then yellow popped on. After that it has worked fine. Now I have a proper approach (at night).
I had created a video about my Wood Junction signal bridge last year and forgot to publish it. It's now available on YouTube.
Outstanding engineering on the signal bridge! What signal heads did you use? Showcase Miniatures? I love the little plug you developed to holed the bridge in place, as well as minimize how many wires need to be fed thru the layout. Brilliant!
For those wanting a similar, but more off-the-shelf solution similar to John Raid's outstanding signal bridge... RR-CirKits makes a 5-head driver board designed for signal bridges. It can be cut down to fewer heads or cut apart for different head spacing, if desired. It is controlled by their 32-head Signal LCC-32H board, which can control up to 32, 3-color signal heads using daisy-chained mini-servo cables. You could still use a single 4-pin connector for a bridge, like John Raid did, in lieu of the two 3-pin mini-servo connectors. All the drivers need is power, ground, serial in, and serial out (daisy chain to the next mast/head's serial in.) Technically, if the bridge has the last signal on a Simple Serial Signal Bus (SSSB), you only need three pins for the bridge connector (no serial out.) Dual- and single-head mast decoder/drivers are available with compatible connectors for Digtrax and Atlas signal masts, as well as with screw-terminals for custom heads/masts. They also have a midget ground signal head driver with 3-color LED soldered on an extension of the PCB. It is designed for Showcase Miniatures SA (HO) heads. BTW, I could be wrong, but it appears that John Raid used a 2x2-pin/socket header pair for the bridge connector.
Actually Ottumwa was mentioned a number of times during the series. Whenever Radar would speak of his home town.
Actually, that doesn’t preclude me from having heard it only once - I was never the biggest fan to pursue seeing all episodes, and I never pursued reruns of it in syndication.
@BigJake those RR-CirKits 5 head drivers look great! That's a nice solution and would be easy to make into a signal bridge like I did. If those were around when I started, I probably would have gone that route. The connectors I used where Molex 2mm board to board connectors similar to these: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/molex/0791098401/2790178 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/molex/0878320406/3313170 The connectors are surface mount but I just solder wires to the leads. There may be better options but I got a bunch of samples from Molex years ago and they seemed to be the right choice for me. John
