Follow the construction of the JLandT Railroad, a HO single deck, proto-freelanced layout set in the 70s to 80s, based on the Reading Lines and Conrail merger era...
Sometimes in the hobby necessity can often create a favourable outcome. Today ended up being one of those great outcomes. In the final push to install the last of the signals I realised I had ran out of triple head signal masts. I normally use Tomar's triple head mast and replace the 1/8" bi-coloured LED's with the RRCirKits - tricoloured LED's with Bivar light pipe lenses. The cost to buy the Tomar type is quite an outlay, and one that would see a two/three week wait for them to arrive from the USA too. So looking at a surplus mast that I had lying around I decided to deconstruct it and reconfigure it to a triple head mast. The process was pretty straight forward and I was also able to adapt the IHC plastic searchlight heads to fit the Tomar mast.
The next stage is to fit the RRCirKits LED's and place onto the layout, this mast will protect the east mainline into Harrisburg...
Signal mast installed on the layout & wired into JMRI & PanelPro...
Over the last few days I have been refining the method I have previously used to install the RR CirKits Tri-Colored LED's into the layouts searchlight & dwarf signals. The new version of the LED's come pre-wired with 36-Awg magnet wire. And they are tiny!
Some would say that tiny can be a pain to work with, and that is certainly true if you had to solder the magnet wires on these. But having them so small makes them much easier to attach to the Bivar light-tubes that I use for the searchlight lenses.
A small amount of CA glue on the LED and lense face and the LED is secured quickly. The next step is to feed the magnet wires through the signal head and then push fit the light tube/lense into the signal head.
When completed these make fantastic and realistic railroad signal masts with prototypical aspect colours...
Well today I decided to give myself an early birthday present, I have pre-ordered a IOWA Scaled Engineering - ProtoThrottle. IOWA Scaled Engineering - ProtoThrottle
This new model railroad throttle is a replica of an EMD locomotive stand with controls that mimic the real thing. It features notched throttle handle, reverser handle, brake handle & spring loaded horn lever, and many other configurable variations. Since changing the layout to predominately a switching layout I have slowed down much of my operations and speeds of locomotives. But trying to use all the functions in the ESU - Select Direct decoders via buttons on my NCE throttle has been difficult. But know the realism and ease of operation will be made some much better when the ProtoThrottle (PT) arrives towards the middle of the year. The PT uses WiFi receivers to communicate with the NCE DCC Command Station. The following videos show how the PT operates, along with some of the cool features...
