Once the basic structure of the gantry is in place, the real task of making the signals signally commences. First up were the smoke deflectors and the brackets for the balance weights. Also fitted are the main portions of the fan route indicator, but that will be explained further once I get it going!
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For the arm bearing point and lamps I am using some 3D prints produced by Steve Hewitt and available from Shapeways. They can be found here
https://www.shapeways.com/product/JJRSB ... arketplace. They are fairly expensive but they are neat and save a lot of manufacture. There is, however, a but - they are very delicate and I am very fearful of thier long term durability. I am highly likely to draw some of my own up and get them cast in lost wax. It will make them even more expensive but I have about a 50% casualy rate at the moment, so maybe in the long term it will be cheaper!
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The arms are Masokits, these are definitely the best available arms for LMS/LNER/BR semaphores. This is especially true of the minature shunt arms as the MSE ones are simply too delicate to bother with (imagine how do I know that.............!). So this is where we are now at with the arms mounted temporarly on the bearings.
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There are five movements in the down direction (three of which operate via the route indicator) and then a pair in the up direction - hence the back to front arms.
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The plates at the top of the dolls are mounting points for ladders. It transpires they are wrong and have already gone!
So the intensity level has dialled up a notch with these portions (especially breaking the bearing/lamp fittings) but it really gets interesting when you try and make these things work.
I don't know myself yet (although I know for the couple of arms I have finished, so I have an inkling), but i think it might be fun to have a little sweepstake on how many moving parts there will be in the finished gantry. Five arms, three fan route indicators and operated by way of angle cranks. Each arm, crank and intermediate wire counts as a moving part, as do the servos....................guesses please?
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