Rob’s been back in touch – this time he makes a signal gantry:
“Hi Al,
This time I am building a three-track signal gantry from scratch with styrene plastic in structural shapes.
I spent quite a bit of time watching UK cab ride videos and snapping photos of the screen as we passed interesting structures.
I finally started sketching up what I thought would be a good compromise between all the various designs I saw out on the railways and what would work both considering the strength of materials I had to work with and the shapes and sizes available.
You’ll notice the final form of what I have built is a bit fatter and thicker than what can be done full scale in steel. That is one of those compromises I mentioned.
It could have been to scale and I expect it would have supported itself, but it would have been fragile and I wanted it to be able to survive my clumsiness at least for a while.
I have done videos about scratch building the signal lamps before so I didn’t go into that part.
In order to prevent someone else from making the same mistake I made, when putting the wires in the cable trunking or conduit running through the gantry, put the resistors on later after you have pulled the wires through (Thank you Henry Best for that suggestion).
I used magnet wire to run all wires in the structure itself then soldered on extensions of regular hook-up wire to feed the conductors to my panel.
This video does not include the automation of the signals, which will come in a subsequent video if anyone is interested.
Rob”
And here’s the post where Rob scratch builds the lights for the signals.
A huge big thanks to Hall of Fame member, Rob.
His signal gantry looks spot on.
I do so enjoy looking at the scratch builds and creative solutions you lot all come up with.
Please do leave a comment below and let us know your thoughts.
That’s all for this time peeps.
Keep ’em coming.
If Rob has inspired you to make that all important start, the Beginner’s Guide is here.
Best
Al
PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.