Signals Branch Announcement

I reached the age of 76 recently and realised that time might be getting short. If you have followed the erratic timing of my blog posts over the last years then you may understand that making signals and also signal kits has dominated the time I had available for the hobby. So, I decided that it was time to finish the layout, complete some projects that stalled and start some new models.

A month ago, I sold the rights to the signal castings to John Dersch of Ornamental Castings. John makes most of the white metal and brass castings that are available for our hobby. For information on availability of the castings, etc. please contact John; his contact details can be found on his Ornamental Castings web site.

As part of the sale I am going to update the various signal build instructions and these will be available on my Signals Branch blog over the next month or two.

In the documentation on the Signals Branch blog I will also include information regarding any extra items such as screws, bolts, wire types and sizes, linear servos, etc.

I will also make available the STL 3D print files of the various base/mechanisms for the signals as well as quite a number of the jigs that I used to bend operating rods, handrails, etc. These STL files will be made available on Thingiverse, a 3D file online 'library'. I will make these STL 3D files available over the next month or two. There are a number of instructions to be written regarding how to use the various jigs.

The 3D STL print files for other 3D items that I have designed will likely become available on Thingiverse from time to time.

Links to these items will be placed on my Signals Branch blog.

The STL files will be free to download but there is a 'Tip the Designer' button if you feel so inclined.

I would like to say that I have quite enjoyed the creative side of making the signals, etc. available in the hobby although at times the building, etc., did get a bit stressful.

So, thank you to those who ordered signals and signal kits, and supported me in the endeavour.

Regards,

Ray Pilgrim

30-11-2025

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

 I would like to wish all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Regards,

Ray

A New Tool - Badger Mini Sand Blaster

Back in 2012 I posted about a small sand blasting tool that I found at Super Cheap Auto. Here is the link.

That earlier sand blaster died a while back and I looked around for a suitable replacement and found the Badger Mini Sandblaster. Please note that this link was good at the time of  posting but may disappear of course.

This not a review as such, just a look at what it can do.

I was working today on the build of the last 13 signals of what grew to be 50 signals from February 2023, up from 12 on my order book. At the time I decided that I would stop the signal builds and it has taken this long to get near the end due to some real life circumstances, one of which was Christine dislocating her two year old hip replacement twice in six months and then the hip revision surgery in late July to correct it.

I use the sandblaster to give a matt surface on the brass signals and parts so that there is a very good 'key' for the white primer I use for the signal post colour. Here are some photos of the set up I use and the output of the sandblaster.

Overall set up outside - Note the rubber gloves, goggles and mask

View inside the container after finishing showing the amount of grit used.

Pressure gauge showing 60 p.s.i. setting and the very necessary water trap

View of the nice matt finish on the brass signal detail parts

And again on the signal posts

All the grit can be used again but it should be dried as the smallest amount of moisture can cause the sand blaster to block which then means that the sandblaster has to be cleaned out and dried, considerably slowing the process. A few hours in an oven at about 110 Deg. Centigrade will dry it well.

Do not do this inside unless you have a proper sandblasting enclosure. Super Cheap Auto sells one but it is way too expensive for hobby use. Super Cheap Auto do sell the grit which is handy.

Not much else to say apart from it works very well, better than the original one.

With time everything changes and also remains the same

I have now read all my BYLONG blog posts up to the present day and I am a bit ashamed by the number of times I said that I was going to do something on the layout, and then failed to do so. I have a bad habit of making/building something, and stopping when I hit a small hurdle like needing to get some more parts, paint, etc. I am also prone to having an idea and running off in pursuit of the new thing at the expense of what I was working on.

Now that I am officially a 'gunna do', I have decided that there a few projects that must be finished.

Here are a couple of projects, in no particular order to be finished:

Lloyds etched brass turret tender kit built for a Eureka Models D50 that gave up its Standard tender for my Wombat C30T conversion to bogie tender version. See my blog post called 'A Fun Week of Modelling' from 11 November 2019.

Here are a few photos showing the tender and where it is still up to, 3D printed chassis, bogies fitted, coupler fitted, and painted. The intent is to fit it with the QSI Titan decoder I removed from the above mentioned Eureka Models D50 Class locomotive. The issue here is to run the extra wiring through the locomotive to make the marker lights work as in my earlier blog post here and another post here.

The next stalled project was started in August 2022 and involves an extension to the Wollar wheat siding and the 'scenicing' in of the Auscision S008 silo. A part of the BYLONG scenery that was done for the original AMRA exhibitions back in 1979 was cut away to allow the siding extension. The cut away 'earthworks' then needed a sleeper built retaining wall to be made. The retaining wall was 3D printed on a FDM printer, painted, weathered, and glued in place. The track was installed, a buffer stop glued in place, and that is where the project has stopped. I guess my problem is reaching to scenic the area behind the retaining wall and to fix up the 45 year old scenery without making it look out of place in the surrounding old scenery.

The observant will have noticed the siding next to the roundhouse that still needs ballasting.

Now, "must be finished", but when?

"The best laid plans of mice and men" and the End of a Story Started in 2018.

Well, so much for posting more often, "the best laid plans of mice and men". Life intruded yet again when my wife Christine dislocated a 2 year old hip replacement at 2:30am on 26 January, just by rolling over in bed. The first time was on 15 August last year followed by a couple of months of rehab physio. Christine had hip revision surgery on 31 July to correct the implants. Apparently, the implants have socket and ball parts that can be replaced. We have been assured that it will not happen again. It was a different surgeon this time, however I won't blame the first surgeon as Christine had a fall, slamming the knee onto the concrete floor of the garage, this was about two weeks before the first dislocation. I think that she dislodged or cause some thing to turn out of alignment.

So for the last year I have been the main 'doer' around the place and I still have the last thirteen signals to build.

I recently got a Samsung tablet and tonight I wanted to check something on my BYLONG blog but didn't have a bookmark saved on it yet so I did a search for my blog. Among the results was a link to my first BYLONG blog post so I read it and a number of the following posts. Well, with time everything changes and also remains the same. More on this in a later post.

In the first post I explained the back-story of the layout and as things worked out I had to back date the layout to the early 1890's. This happened because I received a mystery box in the post containing the parts for a round brick water tower (see the January 2018 post in the side bar to the right). There was a cast plaster round brick column and a brass Trainbuilder VR water tower tank and no explanatory letter or note. After checking the post office mark on the postage stamp, I made a phone call. The mystery gift was from a friend, Rohan Fergusson, as he had noticed that BYLONG didn't have any water facilities.

Now, back to the present or at least the recent, and not so recent past, to begin with. For some time I pondered on where to place it in the confines of the BYLONG yard, it moved a number of times. Next, I was a bit worried about how to treat the bricks without losing the white mortar lines.. The prototype round water towers in NSW seem to be built of red brick but I felt that the red would stand out way to much compared to the drab drought scenery of late 1965. I eventually chose to use various pastels, as paint would likely spread into the mortar which would mean that it would have to be corrected with a white wash in the future.

After a lot of experimenting with the pastels over a long time I decided that it was done.

The next step was to finish the build and scenic it in place on the layout. I designed and 3D printed a circular base 20mm larger in diameter than the tower with a 1mm deep centre to accommodate the round tower. The base was glued in place followed by zip texturing using a light yellow ochre powdered tile grout, some light grey/brown tile grout followed and various coloured static grasses, all held in place with watered down glue. Care was taken not to glue the tile grout in the centre where the round tower was to be glued.

After removing the dry tile grout from the centre of the base the round plaster tower was glued in place and once the glue had set the water tank was glued on. Finally the ladder and incoming water supply pipe were attached.

Along with the water tower BYLONG needed three water columns, so three white metal Uneek water column kits were bought. Two were placed at the Down end of the loop for the double headed goods trains tackling the 1 in 40 grades and the other was placed at the UP end of the loop as not so much water was required when descending the grades. The water columns also service the Main line.

While zip texturing I forgot to cover the loop track with some masking tape and as a result the zip texturing went onto the side of the ballast and ends of the sleepers. The story now is that there is a water leak from the tower that has got in under the loop track and the trains have pumped a muddy slurry up through the ballast as well as turning the grass near the tower a slightly healthier green.

Here is the mud being pumped up by the trains.

The observant will notice the valve wheels on the water columns

While checking my plans for water columns I found one for this style made by Goninans for the SMR with a spoked valve wheel. I thought, why not? So, I drew a 3D version and printed it in resin. I printed six and just as well as the shaft of the wheel/valve is very thin and I broke one while assembling the column. I will have to be careful around the water columns when cleaning the track.

Have a Happy Christmas and a Great New Year

I would like to wish you all the best of the season, have a safe , enjoyable and relaxing time. Ray

I have my Fathers Disease, I like Tools

EDIT 2024-06-05: The links for the mini vertical drill press machines were updated and another slightly larger drill press was added along with photos of the drill presses.

As the title says, I like to find useful tools and use them, although this last part sometimes takes quite a while.

Here is my latest find, a small vertical drill.

I had been drilling holes through the brass signal posts for various detail parts, handrails, ladder supports, etc. by eye using a cordless Dremel motor tool and a 0.45mm drill bit. I knew I needed something better and I saw someone post on the Aus7 Modellers Group on Facebook about a small vertical drill he had bought but without a link to it. An initial ebay search found three that were of similar size with what looked like the same 12-volt small motor. Here is what I chose.

Note that the small steel vice is from my Unimat lathe to the left

Now, it isn't the prettiest version but I liked the large diameter main shaft for likely accuracy and the specification stated that the chuck would hold drill bits from 0.6 - 6.0mm. The other two vertical drills either didn't state the drill bit sizes or the minimum was larger than 0.6mm. Note the plastic vice with the red parts, this came with the vertical drill but really isn't a great deal of use, although the four red columns may be useful to hold an odd-shaped job.

Here is the link for the vertical drill, current as of the date of this post edit 2024-06-05

Here is another vertical drill with a 1.5 - 10mm chuck - Link updated 2024-06-05, nice and compact.

A third vertical drill, this one also stated the chuck capacity as 1.5 - 10mm. Link updated 2024-06-05.

Here is another Mini Drill Machine, added 2024-06-05. Chuck size 1.5mm - 13mm.

Given that I needed to hold very small drill bits, I wasn't prepared to take the risk on those with a 1.5 - 10mm capacity chuck.

My drill came with a power pack that has a multi-position switch for different voltages to give different speeds. I use it at the fastest speed as I want to use very fine drill bits.

The lever to move it up and down looks a bit basic but it gives very good control. To test the drill, I started with a 1mm drill bit, a piece of 0.5mm half-hard brass, and some cutting fluid. It is always a good choice to use cutting fluid with fine drill bits. This drilled quite well, and I followed up with a 0.45mm drill bit. Wait, now the chuck won't hold the 0.45mm bit so I used a very small chuck that I use in my cordless Dremel motor tool held in the existing chuck. I did have to check the runout of the drill bit and needed to move the chuck around a little in the larger chuck until it ran true. This is a good trick to learn. I also used a fine-marking pen to mark both the big chuck and the small one for future alignment. This 0.45mm hole also went well. At this stage, I thought, why not? I then put a 0.3mm drill bit into the small chuck and very slowly and carefully drilled through the 0.5mm half-hard brass.

Here is a link to the very small chuck, it isn't cheap but cheap will get you a small chuck that won't centre the drill bit or it won't hold it. This very small chuck is quoted as holding down to 0.35mm but I held the 0.3mm drill with it.

Once I had satisfied myself that this vertical drill was very good I then 3D designed and printed a jig to hold the tapered brass 'timber' posts such that I could drill a hole through the post at a right angle to the centre line of the post. I designed the jig to hold 16-foot, 18-foot, 23-foot, and 27-foot posts. This jig really makes things easier for me in preparing the signals for the kits.

So overall, I have been very pleased with this quite inexpensive purchase.

Please note that the links above were good at the time of posting.