Thanks Nick,
here are some photos of my finally completed control panel. My background is in electronics and IT so that part was straightforward enough including making the power distributions PCB's for the base, but working with brass and plywood was quite a steep learning curve. I wanted it to be fairly compact with an Edwardian/steampunk feel, hence the various gauges which are partly there to keep a sort of symmetry. I tried quite a few different nuts and fittings before I was happy with it. The Chestnut red mahogany wood dye was perfect. The block instruments are just photo inserts at the moment but I may try converting to servo operation. There's an Adafruit sound chip Adafruit Audio FX Sound Board + 2x2W Amp - WAV/OGG Trigger -16MB which can play 11 railway sounds (bells, signal arms, whistles etc) driven manually at the moment by an Arduino nano every via the keypad and the silver bell buttons, but could be triggered automatically in future.The controller is a standard Kato winkled out of it's case. I'm not completely sold on the Peco levers (which control Megapoints controllers for points and isolators) but there's a limit to how much I want to spend (I've already bought a Proxxon mini mill to cut holes!) . There are 3 variable, 1 stepped and 2 USB power supplies for lighting etc. The labels are from a Brother labeller but I'm not completely sure that they work, but not clear on what else I could use - maybe some min-etched/engraved brass labels?
here are some photos of my finally completed control panel. My background is in electronics and IT so that part was straightforward enough including making the power distributions PCB's for the base, but working with brass and plywood was quite a steep learning curve. I wanted it to be fairly compact with an Edwardian/steampunk feel, hence the various gauges which are partly there to keep a sort of symmetry. I tried quite a few different nuts and fittings before I was happy with it. The Chestnut red mahogany wood dye was perfect. The block instruments are just photo inserts at the moment but I may try converting to servo operation. There's an Adafruit sound chip Adafruit Audio FX Sound Board + 2x2W Amp - WAV/OGG Trigger -16MB which can play 11 railway sounds (bells, signal arms, whistles etc) driven manually at the moment by an Arduino nano every via the keypad and the silver bell buttons, but could be triggered automatically in future.The controller is a standard Kato winkled out of it's case. I'm not completely sold on the Peco levers (which control Megapoints controllers for points and isolators) but there's a limit to how much I want to spend (I've already bought a Proxxon mini mill to cut holes!) . There are 3 variable, 1 stepped and 2 USB power supplies for lighting etc. The labels are from a Brother labeller but I'm not completely sure that they work, but not clear on what else I could use - maybe some min-etched/engraved brass labels?