Getting more light on the work

I'm 58 years old. I wear glasses full time and I am building an N-scale layout. When I go into the layout room, one of the first things that I do is put on an Optivisor

The layout is located in a finished garage. The lighting package is six recessed CFL lighting fixtures. That was more than a decade ago. The light ballasts on two of the CFLs are past their service life. The garage is getting dimmer and consequently work is harder and mostly done during daylight hours.

You get the picture - blurry.

I came up with some quick and cheap work arounds: 

One is the light on the ceiling fan. The other,  as you can see underneath the layout (in the photo below) are clip on lights. Those work well -- up to a point. They can be easily positioned, but aren't sturdy.

Speaking of the photo below -- it shows an interim solution for layout and work lighting. LED shop light fixtures hung from the ceiling. This is what had been the darkest part of the room. Eventually, the shop lights will be replaced with single-tube LED lights -- color adjusted to represent an overcast day in Chicago in the late 1960s to early 1970s. 

Paul Weiss -- Central of Vermont in Novato, CA -- kindly provided for the low, low price of "you come and get them and you can have them for free." A trip to Novato a month ago resulted in a cargo of four fixtures.

Here's the first fixture in place. What a difference. 

Thanks, Paul. 

Testing the servos and replacing two more switches

I'm doing things differently. 

The old way was ready, fire, aim. Hope I got close to the mark. Or I didn't know what I was doing. 

Today, I'm trying it the traditional way -- ready, aim, fire. And I'm working more on process in an effort to get a satisfactory final product. The old way was to try to be careful and hope that I get a good result. That worked a number of times, but when it didn't I'd get frustrated. The new approach reduces the pressure I put on myself to do it right and perfectly the first time. The goal is to improve my skills and reduce the luck involved in the process. 

The projects that are the subject of today's blog: testing the servo installation and replacing two more reclaimed switches. First testing the servo -- A success! To be clear -- Steven Cox is a great coach. He suggested that I set up a test bed to ensure that my servo installation and linkage to the switches work. When the Barr staging is properly installed it will be difficult to maintain -- not impossible -- just difficult. The idea was to ensure that the servos and linkages are robust enough to handle the load. How would we know? I built a testbed that was designed to see if the system would break.

Steven whipped up some arduino software code that would throw the turnout normal and reverse every 1.2 seconds. I set it up and left it alone for 3 hours. What would the result be?

When I came back -- the servo and linkage were still doing their thing -- after more than 9,000 switch throws. I doubt I'll ever throw the track switches in Barr yard that much in the life of the layout. Check out the results. 

Testing the servo and linkage to switches 

This video shows the testbed in action. 

the servo test results - three hours, more than 9,000 switch throws. 

That's the first part of this tale. The second part is that I need to replace two more track switches -- on the Barr exit throat. This is my fault - twice over. The first switch I cut the throwbar short so it would not interfere with a nearby switch. I had a spare switch in the track bin. A quick fix -- just unsolder and pull off the rail joiners on the surrounding track. 

That's when things went awry. The soldering iron was nice and hot, the first three rail joiners came off easily. The last was on one of the frog rails of an existing Peco insulfrog medium LH turnout. Insulfrog = plastic frog -- susceptible to heat. A tight spot, I put too much heat on for too long and the frog melted. ARGHH!!! Thank goodness for the internet. I found an online retailer with supply -- ordered four replacements (I might need an extra or two). Now, I'm waiting for the merchandise to arrive and can finish the staging yard. 

 One other development, the data file has been updated for the Barr exit throat. The switches now throw the correct way. Yea!! So, two big steps forward -- two minor steps back. I'm ahead. See you next time.