Thursday, October 29, 2015

The past few months I have been building a Gn15 micro layout. It is 2x4 feet. When finished it will have two structures, this is the first finished small structure, it is a lean-too mine office.

This structure. It is entirely scratch built except for the Grandt Line door. Real glass windows. When placed on the layout, the open back-side faces a stone wall along a cliff face.
Have Fun! Cheers G





I just finished up an animated prairie dog town for my O scale railroad. I used HO scale Rustic Rails beavers. They have the same body shape as a prairie dog, and the size looks good in o scale, I just had to modify the tails




Figuring out the the animation action was the difficult part. Initailly I "toyed" with the idea of making cams and followers to create the up and down motion. However I decided that it would be too complex.  I decided to use magnets to actuate the up and down motion. The repelling magnetic field causes the piston to rise, and make the dog appear to pop up in the hole. The unexpected neat thing is they also slightly rotate around and emerge in a different direction. 

The animation,  under the scene  is a disc that rotates with magnets radomly placed and glued with the repelling field up. The pistons have the magnets on the bottom with the repelling field down. As the disc rotates under the magnet the dog pops up. Each piston has a stop collar top and bottom. A small 1.5 volt gear-head motor drives the disc through a Delrin plastic link chain and cogs to reduce the speed. In the future I am possibly going to write an article for one of my favorite hobby magazines.