Quite a lot of work has been completed on the Monarch Branch this past week. Additional track has been laid, droppers installed along with turnout motors in the town of Gunnison.
Last weekend I got to cut all of the droppers for the back rail (blue wire) and get the ends soldered and bent to 90 degrees so I could insert these under the rail out of sight. There is a lot of them, one for each length of rail and one on every turnout. Once these were completed my electrical engineering team arrived at 10 am Tuesday morning to get the remaining turnout motors installed.
The first two were installed the week before and helped sort out a few issues before the rest were started. Throw bar size along with the appropriate wire diam was very important along with which hole to use in these new motors.
As you will see in the following images I have chosen to use MP1 motors. I purchased these from Brendan who brings them into the country along with MP5's the newer version. Both Johns and Brendan are installing signals on their new layouts so the three of them have gone with the MP5 version as they have additional contacts for signals. So after a few hours, morning tea and lunch all of Gunnison and the two mine turnouts had the MP1s installed.
Whilst the lads worked at one end of the layout I was busily soldering track feeders to the blue bus wire. Once these were done along came all the black feeders.
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| Two of the MP1's in place and lots of track feeders too. |
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| The controller for the T/table waiting to be wired in. |
I have also made the panel for the UTP getting ready to hook up the new NCE DCC system
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| Panel layout with thanks to Big John. |
And the main line track has been installed in the town Cimmeron.
More turnout motors and track feeders to install this coming week and we might just get a train running for Friday when the lads arrive.
Thanks for dropping by.
Rod.
