Installing the Water Tower

Even if DCC promises that you need only two wires for your whole layout, of course they are going to be in the way. I had made a cut-out in the water tower base to avoid moving the bus wires. However, there was no way to steer clear of the wire for my under-layout desk […]

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 […]

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 […]

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: I’m certain this could all be achieved with hardware, but […]

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 Complete

I think we’ll call the water tower complete for now. I wound up printing the ladder so I could get round rungs without losing my mind drilling holes. The wooden supports for the ladder are quite delicate, and the ladder just lies in there loose so I can remove the roof and mess with the […]

Water Tower Tank

Now we get to the meat of the matter: the tank is usually considered the hardest part about building a water tower. In my case, the hard work was mostly done in OnShape. The prototype tank in Wakefield has two different types of band connectors, and they are in different orientations. I copied these differences […]