Very illuminating

I can't believe its been nearly a month since I last updated this blog! What with family holidays and one thing or another time to write anything down as been as scarce as rocking horse droppings!

However some advantage of the recent warm dry weather has given me chance to work outside wood butchering and painting on my current project "Steam on the Cambrian"
With it's first exhibition booked for September 28th this year and a date for a magazine photo shoot already arranged I had better get my finger out!

So, what has been done over the last few weeks?

The basic layout is done, almost ready to go on show but was missing one fiddle yard and a lighting rig.

The lighting rig idea I picked up from a few other modellers who have used a similar idea, I have made a "hood" for each of the modules that folds down when the layout is in store or transit and raises to an angle of 45 degrees when the the layout is erected. The picture below shows better than I can explain.

Inside the "hood" are 3 x 15 Watt energy saving light bulbs which i hope will give a sufficient  light level. I am going to try various lamps to see which ones give the best colour render and will report back on this.

Moving on!

The "down" fiddle yard has also been built, and some improvements made to the "up" fiddle yard. Both fiddle yards being built to the same design.
One thing that was missing on my previous blog entry "On the fiddle" was some way of preventing locos and stock from over shooting the turntable or dropping off the turntable as it was being rotated.
I came up with this idea  using a strip of alloy bent into a large U shape.Heat shrink tube was used to prevent the barrier shorting on the tracks if lowered too far.

With the barrier lowered stock is prevented from rolling off the table.

Once in position the barrier is raised to allow entry/ exit of trains.

The turntable itself is just long enough to accommodate a tender loco and two coaches,or loco and 5 wagons  which is all I need for operation of "Steam on the Cambrian"
If I wanted to run a section of the CCE though i will have to have a rethink!

So folks as you can see I have been doing something even if my blog has been quiet!

More updates or stories soon!

Cheers!
Frank