Saturday 26 June 2010

Fresh(er)water wiring completed

A weekend exhibiting Coley Park at Yeovilton followed by a weekend in Slovenia on a business trip slowed progress, but last week saw the completion of the wiring for the point operating servos to a 'temporary' switch box which will be replaced by Merg CBUS control one day. Unfortunately, two of the Merg Servo4 controller circuits I built last summer failed to respond to the setting up box. I only had 5 of the 7 points working.

However, I checked the Merg forums and it seems that there was a fault with programming the PIC microcontrollers for the kits last year (since fixed). An email to the Merg kitmaster saw a speedy response, and two new microcontrollers turned up in the post this morning. They are now fitted and working, and the two faulty ones will be returned for re-programming. Many thanks to Martin (Merg kitmaster).

The fiddle yard has one length of track laid and wired up, but that is all for now.

I have also added some more bits of wood to the underside of the baseboards to protect the wiring, servos and circuit boards during transit, and have purchased wood and bits to build the lighting gantry, but it was just too hot to do much today.

So, at the AGM, there will be plain, unballasted track and no scenery, but quite a lot going on underneath the baseboards, and hopefully trains running (analogue DC and/or DCC).

Ian Morgan.

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