July Update

Not much to report this time around. Progress has continued, but mainly painting roadbed, adding risers, and adding feeders. ...lots of feeders. I'll have more progress pictures in September.

I made the decision to get the upper stanchions fabricated. The design is similar to what Paul Deis has done on his railroad. This will allow the thickness of the upper level to be approximately 3". Here is a diagram.

The design is a 1/8" thick 2"x4" plate that will be mounted vertically to the wall with two lag bolts. A 1" square tube will be welded to the plate. Once welded, they will be attached to the walls. 

The spacing will be 16" on center, which is standard stud placement. Risers will be attached. For benchwork in front of the windows, spacing requires a larger span than 16". To address that, I will attach a horizontal piece of tubing connected to stanchions on each side of the window. 

I decided to have the pieces professionally welded which will save me some time and the welding will be much prettier than my welding. However, I did have to do the fabrication of the components. 

To the right is 280' of 1" square tube and 40' of 1/8"x2" strapping. This is all the steel required for upper level construction.

Next up was to reduce the size of the steel.

To the left is my set up and cold cut saw. As I was doing a lot of the same cut, having a stop block installed made repetitive cutting consistent.

You may also notice my extended stand to the right. Since my steel was in 10' sections, I had to create an additional stand. What you see is the stand for my tile saw. It wasn't tall enough, so a box was used to get the steel raised to a level height.

Here are the results of the cutting activity. The bucket contains all the 1/8" plates. The stack of steel are the various sizes of the stanchions. 

Doing all this cutting in 108+ degree weather was a wonderful experience. NOT. But it's a dry heat... The holes have all been drilled in the plates and everything is ready for welding. That should be complete by the end of August.

I also have the need for some magnetic uncouplers in the Violet Alley area. I'm not a fan of magnetic uncoupling, however I have no choice in this area. I want the magnetic uncoupling to be on demand, versus a Kadee magnet between the rails. I've found the Kadee magnets cause a lot of unintended uncoupling. Plus, I don't like the look. I want a solution that is under the track and is controlled from a remote point to engage the uncoupling.

I went to Home Depot and picked up a number of different magnets for testing. Unfortunately, none provided the result I was looking for. I also tried magnets extracted from old hard drives. Again, the results didn't satisfy my need.

I ordered some Neodymium magnets online. I tested two versions and was happy with the cylindrical magnets and their strength. I'm not sure what I'll do with the cubes, but I'll figure out something somewhere in my house.

I've designed a mechanism that will be underneath the roadbed and manually controlled from the fascia. It will move them up appropriately for uncoupling and down when not needed. The test version will be 3d printed soon. If I'm satisfied with the results, then I'll move forward. If not, I'll have to do some replanning. 

That completes this update. Albeit a brief one.

.