I was wondering if anyone knew of any scratchbuilding articles on building signals, lighted as well as semaphores. I saw one article listed by on www.gatewaynmra.org but was wondering if there was one out there that had more detailed sketches of the assembly process.
I have quite a few micro-bulbs that I bought a while back from “Microtools” and was wondering if I could use those in place of the LEDs mentioned in the article. As well I need something with more sketches since I kinda need pictures of the assembly process in order to get a feel for it.
If you can find Allen Keller video #9, Rick Rideout, owner of Rix products, shows how he does it.
He glues a N.J. International single light search light head to a brass tube and runs the bottom of the tube through a relay base. He ran a fiber optic strand through the tube.
Unfortunatly that vedio is sold out, never to be released again. Maybe you can find a copy for rent at a hobby shop.
I’ll give it a try, just not a whole lot out there, really don’t want to spend the big bucks on signals if I can avoid it…have way too many I want to install. Steve
Maybe you can find some junk ones at a train / toy show and salvage the bases / relay boxes and targets.
Have you done any casting of small parts? Either make a master from balsa wood or use a salvaged part for the master and cast them out of hydrocal.
Then again there are different types of relays. The base could be concrete. Plastruct has Acrylic Cubes that may work for a base.
Let me think about this. I’m planning on doing some mold making soon. Just waiting for the vacuum bags. I’ll see what I have in my scrap box.
Thanks, Gary any help would be appreciated. I did purchase MR’s book “Realistic Animation, Lighting and Sound” which had some great articles on animatronics, including a plan for building a working semaphore, but it involves quite a bit of hardware just to make one including two motors to move the arm up/down. Building signals probably won’t be so hard as compared to wiring it and hooking it up. I am going a train show this weekend, hopefully I can scrounge around and find some sigs to work on. Steve
Good Friday Steve. I took a piece of 1/4" (.250) square styrene strip and drilled a pilot hole with my $60 drill press. Then I choped off a chunk, with the hole in it, on my $30 chop saw. I found a piece of scrap tubing and opened the hole in the base with a drill bit mounted in a large pin vice. For the platform, I used .040" X .250" styrene strip and drilled a pilot hole and opened the hole by hand. The ladder is a scrap piece from Tichy Train Group Safty Cage Ladder and Stairscasekit. Sorry, I didn’t have a signal head. IHC sells inexpensive signal heads. I figure you could make the mast, including the signal head and LED, for about $5 each. Not including tools.
Disclaimer: I didn’t measure anything. This is just a mock-up for a visual aid. For the amount of time it took me to take the photo and post it, I could have made ten of them!
Wow that looks great Gary! I figured I’d try my hand at it as well. I do have a lot of scrap miniature aluminum piping laying around, you pic gives me a good starting point. I have way too many on my railroad that would cost me dearly if I buy…Many Thanks!!! Steve
The article you were refering to from the NMRA is probably the article I read in Scalerails, the bulletin from the SER of the NMRA. I have it laying around somewhere. One of the neat things about the signal was it was built on an IC socket and plugged in to the layout. IF it was bumped it would unplug instead of getting damaged. They used the IHC target faces mentioned earlier, ladder stock, 1/16 brass tubing, and the appropriate colored 3mm LED’s. I want to eventually try building these myself. I will try to find the mag with the article in it.
I toyed around w/ the idea of building custom signals. I found one possibility for the target can be a small diameter flat washer w/ a small enough inner diameter to set in an LED. This can be “Krazy Glued” I assume to the 1/16th brass tube and a target shield made from styrene or aluminum tubing cut to shape. W/ the exception of the LED, the entire assembly for each signal would cost less than a buck. I also read an article in Model Railroad’s book “Detailing Tips and Techniques” which describes building streetlamps from tubing…some of the methods used can easiliy be used for signals. Steve
Gary, i use the scratch building technique form www.gatewaynmra.org and they work great…I bought the brass ladder from the hobby shop and the rest is balsa wood, styrene plastic, spring wire (for hand rails) and brass tubing…I like the LED’s …i’ll cut a slot in the brass tubing and run two wires through it connected to one leg of the LED and solder the other legs of the LED’s to the brass stantion tube and use it itself for the return wire …i’ll solder the resistor to the base of the brass tube and then to the train detection circuit…that way it’s not so hard to try and get 4 wires into the brass tube but just two and the brass tube itself acts as the other two return wires…for the target lenses I use tiny brass washers and then glue them to the LED and then make the lens covers out of very thin plyable styrene plastic and paint the back with silver paint so the LED’s can’t be seen from the back…Chuck
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Those look sweet. I like those better than store bought. Since I’ll be making RTV rubber molds for another project, I think I’ll make one base for a master and make a mold for castings. Same for the little plug on top. Maybe the search lights too.
December 1979 RMC has a how to scratch build Grade Crossing Flasher article. Very detailed inst. and drawings for N scale to O scale with dimentions in ft so you have to scale them to your scale. I just ran across it, looking through some of my old RR Magazines. I don’t know if you can get back issues or not, or if you happen to have it. The article starts on Pg. 60.
A long time ago I used a switch motor, mounted sideways, to drive the business end of a semaphore. It was just a crummy solenoid I had from a junk-box sale, but it did the job. I think an Atlas snap-switch motor would do the same job. That semaphore had a single white bulb which got either a red or green cover depending on the position of the signal arm.
