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Rediscovering Creativity.

55 posts in this topic

Attempted to paint the road surface on the bridge and blotched it. The road surface is concrete (cement and gravel), so I decided to splatter dark grey paint (same colour as the bridge framework). It started of okay but soon over-splattered in some areas while trying to reach the sparser bits.

I was tempted to repaint the surface with the light grey and start over again. But intuition told me I can utilize this to my advantage. So I dried brushed (brush carrying minimal amount of paint) the lighter areas with dark grey and the darker areas with the light grey. Then proceeded to do the whole area again but with a fine paint brush. Very time consuming, but I think it's looking good.

The bottom right hand picture shows on end of the road and as far as I got.

51_Concrete Road.jpg

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My body has been attacked by some cold virus for the last few days. It is winning the battle. Tomorrow it should be okay.

Hopefully, weather permitting, a few friends and I will go for a cycling ride. Most likely the usual 40 km flat route. We've had several days of rain and cold winds. It has been keeping us indoors, and some of us have already expressed symptoms of cabin fever (restless, irritable and discontent).

Getting back to the bridge. Painting the road surface within the bridge span has been a real challenge. There is not much room between the span framework to access the road surface. It has been a test of patience and persistence to do the job as well as the rest of the bridge.

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Finished painting the road. Added centre and fog lines, plus centre road reflectors.

Couldn't help myself playing dramatics with 1/72 scale cars. These will be positioned on the road at the end of the project. The reason is that nearly everything else (position-wise) will be fixed to how it is in real life. The cars can be anywhere on the road. My thinking is to place the cars where it will assist in the overall balance of the composition.

52_Concrete Road Marking.jpg

I am going to take some time off from hands-on work on the project. I have some learning to do about making landscapes like they do with model railway. Also waiting for electronic parts to arrive.

Besides hands-on work I also draw and write information for the service manual. It also includes the diorama is being built. A big part of this is the electrical side of it. Working out the new wiring for the control console has shown me that even logging everything down can still be misleading.  The wiring diagram is too complex and large to have all the electrics drawn on one sheet of paper. There are several sheets to follow. It can be somewhat discouraging, until I accept it, that I can think I got it worked out only to find that a wire/track is not going were it suppose to. The main problem is that certain parts need to be modified for one reason or another to make things work. These modifications generally require alternative wiring. Changing on wire can suddenly change others that are connected to it. This reminds me of Chaos Theory.

Anyway, I will be doing some researching and juggling jobs for a while. I got a feeling that future updates will be more sporadic than it has been.

Hope you have enjoyed the journey as much as I have. It sure feels good to be creative again. As an only child, creativity was my dearest friend. It is nice to be reunited. 

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It would be better for me to work on the control console at home rather than at the museum.

The main reason, besides having the tools, is I need to make a reasonably large wiring harness. The museum has not got the space for that arrangement. So the museum staff transported the console, and now the console is in my living room. It sure is getting crowded here.

IMG_1964 sml.jpg

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Underneath the control panel, the two main switches looked bland for a wiring diorama display. Decided to uplift and dramatize the switch brackets with some colour.

53_Control Panel touch-up 1.jpg

 

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There are two main tasks underway at the moment.

One is to organize a wiring harnessing jig, or peg board. I never before had to do a wiring harness larger than for a radio or TV. This project larger and is quite difficult to make a wiring harness in situ. The space under the panel, within the console, is too cramp to do such a job. However, I noticed on the w.w.web, automobile wiring harnesses are done on a flat board. This approach is a better arrangement for wiring the console.

IMG_1986B.jpg

The other task is to prepare all the control panel instruments for refitting onto the panel. A few alterations are needed, such as adding a locking pin switch, extra labeling, replace missing red pointers on the switch handles, cleaning, polishing, and some touch-up painting. 

IMG_2052B.jpg

Once the harness is completed, and the panel instruments are in place, then both the harness and instruments can be connected.

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Completed first half of the wiring harness on the wiring jig. It looks like a map of arteries and veins of a human body (but with three legs) xD.

56_Wiring Harness Layout.jpg

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Wired the control panel instruments.

Left: shows the set-up before connecting the wires. Right: Wiring completed.

57_Control Panel Wiring.jpg

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Needed a break from the wiring side of the project. so I decided to do some landscape modelling. Well, preparation really.

Some of the river bank landscape is made from rocks. I discovered (on Internet) a good way to create imitation rock is to break-up cork to the sizes required. The cork I used was from those hand-held sanding blocks. I first cut them into strips and then break pieces off by use a pair of pliers. It took all day to break four sanding blocks. Then I used a sieve to separate the small crumbs from the bigger bits. These crumbs actually look like dirt gravel. The bigger bits, the rocks, after gluing them into place, I will paint them to look like the basalt rocks.

55_Cork Rocks & Cravel.jpg

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Installed the control panel onto the console and wired the harness to the three terminal strips.

Now I have to make another wiring harness which goes from the three terminal strips to the two connectors located on the back wall of the console. These connectors will have plugs and cables connected between the console and the display diorama.

58_Console Wiring-part 1.jpg

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Still waiting for certain parts to arrive from China. I checked the supplier, and I found out that I am not dealing with the actual manufacturer, but some in-between agent. The agent reputation via eBay is the worst I've seen, with close to 500 complaints by customers.

I'll check who I am dealing with next time I make an eBay order. I always place more trust in people than some think I should. Some say that is a fault of mine. But I still rather trust and be sometimes disappointed (for a short time) than to not trust and be fearful all the time. 

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Decided to include a passive infrared (PIR) sensor, as a motion detector, for operating the console interior lighting when someone approaches it. The PIR will be located inside the console.

Because there will be a metal kick-plate covering the bottom of the perspex front panel, the PIR has to be positioned above the plate. A wooden bracket was built to accommodate this.

60_Console PIR sensor.jpg

The PIR operates the white double power point which the console lighting power source is plugged into.

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I wanted to add some felt between the clear perspex front panel and the metal console. Could not get it in a grey colour, so I bought a cream coloured felt and grey dye. Dyeing the felt worked well. I cut strips and glued them to the console edges.

61_Console Felt Lining.jpg

Bought a length of flexible LED strip and attached them around the inside edges of the console where the front panel will be attached.

62_Console LED Strip Lighting.jpg

Bottom photos show inside the bottom left corner of the console opening. These strips can be cut (see scissor symbol in top photo) at intervals. Then wire can be soldered to join them again. In this way, the strip can follow a 90 degree bend.

Now the clear perspex front panel needed to be attached. However I soon discovered that the PIR sensor does not work behind perspex, let alone glass, because the infrared heat-waves cannot penetrate it. So I had to drill a series of holes across the front of the PIR to allow the infrared waves to reach the PIR.

63_Console Front Panel.jpg

The bottom section is the kick-plate cut from the original front panel. The original manufacturing plate was re-attached to its centre.

Below shows what the finished console looks like in both the dormant and activated states. Activation occurs when somebody approaches the console. The interior lighting turns off when either there has been no movement detected for about ten seconds, or when somebody starts using the console to operate the model bridge.

64_Console Diorama.jpg

I am very pleased with how it turned out. I am sure the museum visitors will enjoy looking at what is involved within the console.

Now that the console is finished. I can now get back to working on the model bridge display.

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