Managed my monthly visit to the train set, really need to organise my time priorities a bit better
Not a lot happening except I won some brand new TOU's in an auction, enough to do the whole planned layout with a couple spare.
Ideally they should be mounted under the baseboard but that would take some sort of forward planning, of which most of you will have gathered by now is not happening a lot on this train set, someone once called it busking, I call it making it up as you go along.
Needless to say I had pretty much planned on surface mount switch motors but had no idea the TOU's were so big, good job I hadn't planned on below board mounting as they'd have poked down into the next level several inches if fitted vertically. You can get adapter plates but none were in this lot and it seemed silly not to use the 3D printer for exactly this sort of thing. I'll be honest I've never fitted a TOU in my life or any other switch unit, simply relying on Mk I sky finger so it was a bit of a trial here and there but once I'd worked out a way to fit and connect the first, it didn't take long to do the rest.
Although they're surface mounted they're outside of the main scenery area, having said that this part is basically a storage area so it doesn't really matter but I will add some basic scenery like ballast, ground clutter as it seems a waste to leave such a vast expanse as bare bones.
On the outer edge the two units will be vertically mounted and that adapter plate is in the printer at the moment.
For power I've found an old 5V 2A plug top PSU module for some long lost gadget sent to the great recycling centre in the sky, there's enough grunt there to power all the switches on the planned layout. Five volts gives a nice steady 6 second throw and very low motor noise.
I suppose now I'll have to get some DPDT switches and start making up a basic panel with route and switch indicators an then figure out how to get the track occupancy units integrated.
