A Few More Connections

Tuesday 2nd Jan

Six of us at Broadway today firstly to do a bit more work under the signal box.
The levers for operating the
signals furthest away from the box have the adjusters on the floor of the box upstairs (to allow tightening or loosening of the signal wires with extremes of temperature - as explained in a previous blog)  . The other levers operating the shorter wire runs are connected using (what I call Turnbuckles - with one LH and one RH thread). These allow for the initial tensioning of the wires and for any small adjustment that may become necessary. Here you can see them hanging down from the "lever tails"

They are attached to the levers with shackles and will eventually have the signal wire attached with a shackle at the bottom. The wire will then pass under the pulley below and out through the tunnel. Here's a view with them all fitted

Also fitted today was the final down rod connecting lever 19 to its angle crank down below. This now gives us a full set of connections for the point rodding - four going north and three going south - although No. 19 will not be used unless an additional set of points is fitted for a future layout!
No. 19 is 3rd from the left.

The mechanical locking has now been tested and functions well but with one additional  lock being required. This will be carried out by Malcolm and George on Thursday - then it will be complete. To facilitate  the testing of the mechanical locking combinations  the electric locks were disconnected - so just those to re-connect and the covers to fit and hopefully this stage is then complete.

To increase the reliability and brightness of our signal lamps along the railway we have now fitted warm white LED's. So far Cheltenham and Gotherington have been converted - Toddington and Winchcombe to follow.