It's all clear ahead...

Well tonight I have been playing around with the colour mix of our double head - searchlight masts.  I have installed this one on the layout to test the colours under actual layout lighting.

The first photo is with the LED's being driven at 12V, the two below are being driven at 5V which is the eventually output from the Digitrax SE8c Boards.

So far I'm pretty happy with the primary red & green on the Tomar Searchlights, the yellow which is driven by both the red & green is acceptable too.

I'm finding that I need a brighter green & dimmer red to get the yellow to pop above red, and also not look orange.  Its a slight trade off as I'd like to have the green dimmer but this would turn the yellow more towards the orange spectrum.

Even the camera which is Nikon J1 is picking up the colour difference on the mast, and this is under the layout lighting which is a NEC 6000K 38W Daylight Fluorescent Tube.

Next step will be to try out the double head dwarf and see how they look.

Cheers,

Jas...

Ready for some Re-Wiring...

Well Santa came a little early today.

In time for a few nights of re-wiring the entire layout for the detection & signalling.

The layout power bus will be re-run from the PSX Circuit Breakers and the common rail detection to the BDL168's that need to be installed around the layout.

I also have to install the PSX-AR for the new Classification Yard too.

The next step will be to make up a power district board above the NCE DCC Command Station that will house all of the power district PSX Circuit Breakers, the Auto Reversing CB will be located nearer to the areas.

More soon.

Jas...

Classification Yard progress...

Well over the last week in between working on the detection & signalling I managed to install the remainder of the drywall/plaster roadbed and cork sub roadbed for the Classification Yard.

I have also began laying the track at the entrance that forms the wye in the South Bend area.

Next step will be to finish off the track, and begin wiring.

Jas...

JL&T Detection & Signalling Plan...

Ok folks its taken a little time to get here, but we finally have the detection blocks and signal placement done.

A very special thanks needs to go out to Brendon Dennis who has guided & educated me through the finer points of detection and signal placement.

We both spent about 2 1/2 hours the other night physically marking out the detection blocks and signal mast/dwarf placement.

Here is the detection block & signal mast dwarf plan:

The naming conventions on the plan are area representative as I've only really named one location "South Bend Curve" (SB).

When looking at the plan the triangles are the isolators, these are placed on the inner most rail (nearest to the fascia) and are classed as common rail wiring.

As can be seen in the photo below the inner most rail is marked with a yellow dot, this will have an insulated rail joiner placed at this point and separate the two detection blocks.  You can see the naming convention as well.

The arrow with the dot, dot, M is our symbol convention for a double head signal mast, controlling to the left (east) of this detection block boundary.  The T7-3 represents Tortoise (switch machine) Number seven (7), on SE8C board number three (3).

Next stage is to add all the insulators and then the tedious task of re-wiring the layout for the common rail detection will begin.

Jas...