2016_12_05 So how was your day?

2016_12_05  My day was sort of........ destructive?

So I am still messy? Sure am :)  However this is a special mess. Its caused by my difficulty to find something I know I have, and now I need, but have no idea where it is.

So in my search, I filled another rubbish bin, and moved everything of value, that did not have a home to here. As well I cleared my proper work bench down, and perhaps I can do my work there now, as I have room to work once more. Might stop me loading the bench board up as I usually do, just like this.
Possibly by tomorrow all this will have found a home. Already today I reduced the pile by more than half.

Constructive work? Well I tried to mount the point I recently modified here to access the turntable. This means that  the distant (see it behind tree?) had to be moved out further. This meant I had to rewire it, that is, extend the 7 wires that operate it and move the signal and tortoise motor to a new position. I wanted to use some ribbon cable, and so began the search which turned into a clean up.

Yesterday I damped down the scenery and the track to allow the modification!   Damn another mess!

But of course that got cleaned up and the point was still too close to the turn table. So I upended the board and removed the distant signal, so I could cut the point back another 6 inches or so.

So the Tortoise has already gone You can see the bent link that joined the bottom of the signal post to the tortoise? so it was mounted to the right. I found 5 wires joined to Tortoise and two to the signal.

I noted down where each wire was meant to go, and cut them away and joined them to the new ribbon cable. Tidied up the wiring. I notice  here I have not reconnected the power feeds yet.

So here is the signal in its new position. It does sit ok when the weight of the connecting rod from the Tortoise sits on the connectors.

So now I need a home signal to protect the turn table road? Funny thing about that......

I did have a brass home signal, however it had been damaged many years ago, and the mast was bent. So I spent several hours with needle nose pliers and I actually straightened the post, and pulled out all the lattice and it looked, perhaps 85% good to go.  So it was sitting up on the baseboard whilst I was banging and drilling and somehow it disappeared. Well I looked for it, unaware I had already found it several times it appears. :(
It was on the floor...  and looked like this

I guess it did not want to be fixed. A new one will cost me $200. Such is life....

Cheers
Rod