Water tower mechanism in action

My goal when designing the controls for Pembroke has been to simulate the actions of real railroaders, but smaller and lighter. Real railroading is heavy, dangerous work, after all! When it comes to the Pembroke water tower, this means there is, of course, no button. Almost nothing had a button in 1905, except for the […]

Water Tower Electronics Installed

With the last gremlin exorcised from the electronics project board, I’ve turned the workbench back to physical mode. During testing, I found that the limit switch was not in fact making contact with the linear actuator. I considered hacking it, but it was easier to tweak the design of the bracket and print a fresh […]

Water Tank Speaker

I’m still grappling with the electronics aspect of the water tank. The two switches are no longer a problem, but now the MP3 player stops all processing when the volume changes. I’m sure I’ll get past this one too: it’s just a matter of experimenting and probably more soldering and unsoldering. In the meantime, here […]

Back to the Breadboard

So, it turns out there’s such a thing as a pull-up resistor that pulls a pin away from ground so that when the pin is shorted to ground using, say a micro-switch connected to a valve rope on a water tower, the microcontroller can detect the change. Without the pull-up resistor, the input is said […]

Tender Truck Proof of Concept

The first print was too tight, and the second print was too loose. The third print was just right! So after playing with the action for a few days and showing it to my friends, I soldered some .010″ phosphor-bronze wire to some custom-made brass tube bearings, and assembled the truck. Honestly, it could roll […]

Productive Group Modelling Night

For about a year, the local NMRA division has hosted a group modelling evening. Despite it being only ten minutes’ drive for me, my calendar never seemed to line up. This Friday I finally made it. I brought along the soldering iron and the project board for the water tower, and wound up wishing I’d […]

Are New Trucks the Answer?

The resolution of the mystery derailment at turnout 5 continues to elude me. I’ve spent hours watching that leading wheel of the tender truck kissing the rail and floating off at the critical point. The more I watched it, I became less and less convinced that it was ever in proper contact with the rail. […]

Water Tower Circuit

The breadboard for the water tower has sat on my desk long enough that it finally transcribed itself into a diagram to start making the circuit permanent. Despite the apparent complexity, it is in fact just four simple circuits mediated by software in the microcontroller: The switch for the valve to start the whole operation. […]

Water Tower Animation

The gubbins for the inside of the water tower have come together at last. Once the noise maker was working, it was a straightforward matter of programming to make it all work – at least in the unit and integration tests! When I went to upload it to the board, however, there were still some […]

Water Tower to get Noisy

After almost two weeks of avoiding manuals, while scanning blog posts and speed-watching the occasional tutorial, the speaker attached to the DF Player Mini attached to the ESP32 board burst into song! Along the way, I procured more bread boards because the ESP32 is too big to fit on a single one and allow connections […]