Katzhagen - Archive - December 2007

Repeating the last year's December events...



Illuminating X-mas trees indoors as well as outdoors and small ones...

... means recelebrating the known procedures. Some years ago I gave up tearing down the Christmas illumination outside in the garden after Christmas. It remains mounted in the trees all over the year - ready to be simply plugged in again late in November. Climbing around on the ladder with cold and wet fingers now is excercise left to others. The same story with the garden railway's X-mas tree: It is stowed inside the modell building in January...
Now I'm searching for a similar practical solution for the living room.

What I always intended to do...


... finally got done between the years more or less by accident when I had to clear my desk because the monitor located on it was in need of a repair. After years, a picture of a rolling road was found again...

Bearing wheels, angles, screws, nuts and a brass profile


Now let's see whether it at all might work...
This was an opportunity to finally build such a beast. I neglected the idea to repair the monitor and headed off towards the nuts-and-bolts-shop. Some of the parts I bought there needed minor adjustment but all in all the parts fitted together quite well.

Prototypes assembled for test purposes


Electrically isolating mountings for the roller stands...

After assembling a single roller stand for a first test, it turned out that the initial thoughts regarding this project were correct. I began to assemble the complete rolling road:


Building this beast took me a bit less than a day.



Rolling road in action
Building the rolling road was flueless - in contrary to what expected at first. The only trick was to exactly size the wooden blocks between the sides of the roller stands. The L-shaped brass profiles provide both an electrical connection and an easy possibilty to move the roller stands as needed.




And last but not least...



... this year's X-mas picture.

I wish all of you that you may achieve the goals and fulfill the dreams you didn't or couldn't this year. Let 2008 bring you more happiness and challenges worthy of your aspirations. All the best to you and yours for 2008 !


November 2007 | Archive "Current Affairs" | January 2008