Katzhagen - Archive - August/September 2008
NEWSFLASH ! Susch, 31.08.2008 19:57 - UFO-Sighting !
A strange kind of a flying sourcer showed up above the idyll.Shocking pictures
Summer 2008 - No big deals
As the headline vaguely indicates, most of the various changes took place in the detailing area during the last weeks. Some of them were labor-intensive while their results were hardly visible (or even invisible), others needed next to no time and turned out to be quite effective or decorative.A fountain for Susch
The construction of an attraction for the touring Preiser family which was started last year, was finished after some stages of helplessness regarding its arrangement and design.
Pond with a little fountain
A moulded pan derived from a minipond set and some pebbles mounted with cement mortar were used to build up this scenario. Cement mortar also was used for the way to and around the pond. The pavement was made from gravel of fine granularity which was put onto the wet cement and fixed with a waterproof glue. The Faller pump set was used for the water cycle.
Where to put which rock ?
First visitors...
... seem to love sightseeing
Reinforcement after walking round the attraction
A power outage and its repair
One night the layout presented me with a bad joke - an outage of the illumination. After checking the fuses in the basement it turned out that there was a problem with the old power supply... A check of the power supply's output using a clamp meter showed that the voltage broke down if the layout required more than 18A. In result the control executed a reset. A repair of the power supply didn't make much sense due to its age and its limited resources for future enhancements of the layout.As luck would have it, I got hold of a Siemens 40A power supply - which required a three-phase AC supply...
SITOP 40, SIRIUS contactor and automatic circuit breaker
Some conversions were needed to put the new device into operation. In the fuse box the old melting fuses for the three-wire receptacle in the basement were replaced with a 16A C-type automatic circuit breaker. As all of the layout's components primary power was controlled by a pulse switch, a contactor was necessary to control the new SITOP power supply. Both of the latter found their new home on a snap-on mounting rail. Now a suitable cover which can cope with the waste heat has to be found.
Drilling, filling rewiring.
Done - just a cover has still to be found
Arranging details
Waiting for the freight train...
One of my favourite sideline jobs during this summer was adding and brushing
up details.
Additional loads and goods as well as related utensils found a new home in the freight station area. A little check-in terminal was placed at the neighboring motorail train's ramp. The ramp's surface meanwhile got a durable paint - after application of a suitable paint base.
The first attempt to repair the water tower's defective anticollision light resulted in scoring an own goal. Assuming there are no defective LEDs, I replaced the LED's circuit board - I better should have checked the LED prior to building a new board. Now I have a circuit board for the flashlight in stock - which may come in handy some day.
Additional loads and goods as well as related utensils found a new home in the freight station area. A little check-in terminal was placed at the neighboring motorail train's ramp. The ramp's surface meanwhile got a durable paint - after application of a suitable paint base.
The first attempt to repair the water tower's defective anticollision light resulted in scoring an own goal. Assuming there are no defective LEDs, I replaced the LED's circuit board - I better should have checked the LED prior to building a new board. Now I have a circuit board for the flashlight in stock - which may come in handy some day.
Pigeon breeder
Tickets for the motorail train
is definitely not my desired profession, but the number of these pets
provided with the Pola pigeon house was definitely to small to create a
convincing feeding scenario. A friendly email sent to the folks at Faller
asking for some additional creatures, was serviced in the known excellent
manner with a corresponding consignation. A view into the ornithology book
showed what the paint had to look like.
Patience, a magnifier and a single-hair paintbrush...
Feeding the plastic poultry
At the sawmill
some nice details were added which complemented the already existing idyll. Loyaly according to the principle that "less is more".While the miller is carrying a sack towards the railway loading platform, his love is busy dealing with the housework. Scything was urgently needed at the brook above the sawmill and the hiker found a wonderfil vantage point on the bridge. The lantern which now illuminates both the bridge and the brook was found when inspecting a box of remainders...
Not only climbing the staircase, the iron is waiting for me as well...
Next I want the tracks on this side of the brook...
Illumination for both the bridge and the brook
