The journey down the long and winding road of trains....
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to participate in the GATS show in
Syracuse, NY with LUCNY. This event really kicked my entrance into the
Train aspect of LEGO into high gear. I had bought some track and had the
Santa Fe and Metroliner before the event, but the thrill of showing off a
layout and interacting with the crowd was the coup-de-gras. Since then I
have been designing layouts with Track Designer seemingly notstop. I also
have been hard at work adding some automation to my layout. This has also
been spured on by the gift of Mindstorms 2.0 for Christmas from my parents.
So tonight I present my versions of a switch house, decoupler and end of the
line bumper.
End of the Line Bumper with Flashing Light
About a week ago Rob Hendrix posted a set of instructions for his end of
the line bumper (http://news.lugnet.com/inst/?n=242). I took his version
and added a flashing light to the top.
Automatic Decoupler
I did some digging looking for any designs people had done of an automatic
decoupler. I found Martin Legault's design
(http://news.lugnet.com/trains/?n=16347) and
Rick Clark's design (http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=18638).
I then set out to build my own. It works quite well. It is fantastic not
to have to take the train apart by hand.
Hello Nate, Just for your information, are you familiar with this ingeneous remote switch solution designed by Rick Clark: (URL) ? With friendly greetings, M. Moolhuysen. (22 years ago, 25-Jan-03, to lugnet.trains)
(...) Welcome! <snip> (...) Nice design! Haven't built it yet, but it looks rather elegant. The only thing is that you may find that if you're using MindStorms to control the point, it is difficult to keep the motor on long enough to throw the (...) (22 years ago, 29-Jan-03, to lugnet.trains)
(...) Glad to hear you caught the bug. I should have never given you the remote control that day... :-) *snip-o-matic* (...) Jeff's design is great, and it looks like you have compacted the footprint a bit. What's the cycle time on the swithching (...) (22 years ago, 29-Jan-03, to lugnet.trains)
