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By day I'm a propeller-head geek. I design software for electronic components for a major automotive supplier. When I'm not earning a paycheck, I enjoy playing music -- primarily jazz and classical but I dabble in other genres as well. I also compose, arrange, and play with electronic gadgets and toys. My other hobbies include photography, colored pencil drawing, genealogy, model railroading, and crosswords.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Model Railroad Progress

It's been a long time since I've made any progress on my model railroad. It has gotten a little scenery work here and there but has been non-operational for at least a year - I have yet to get around to completing the electrical wiring. Today, I finally completed the mechanical work of assembling the operating panel. The next step is break out the soldering iron and put wire to terminal. Here is a mockup of the panel - created in Visio:
Figure 1 - panel mockup

I've also devised a way to use SPDP panel switches for my Atlas twin coil switch machines. The unique thing about this design is the use of bipolar electrolytic capacitors - they're a bit pricey but greatly simplify the the design.

Figure 2 - bipolar capacitive discharge schematic

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