Day 10 - some thoughts

(A day late sorry)

Sometimes you don’t realize how long you spend thinking about tasks on a layout until you actually start logging your time. 

Like with these daily blog posts. I look at the work I’ve done, and yes, some of it like cutting the deck of tipping dock. Took a heck of a long time. 

But then there was the working out how to make the jig for the yard fence. I swear that measuring up and working out where all the stops and supports went took longer than the actual assembly of the fence sections themselves. I may have already made a mock up of the wagon loading chute, but there’s a drawing being done to help me make the actual thing. The safety handrail for the dock is another thing being worked on. There’s a lot of time being spent thinking.

I have pieced together several drawings for projects for the layout. I use an app called Graphic. They help me visualize the construction and any problems that might occur. They may, or may not, depending on the structure, be to scale. They may, or may not, depending on the finished model be an accurate copy of the prototype.

Tipper shelter, so many things to work out. So much head scratching.

A drawing for the tipper shelter was a case in point. It was an absolute must. The prototype was so flimsy there was little to go on from the prototype photo. In fact the whole thing didn’t come fully together until I worked out how to make it stand up by itself. Which I couldn’t do until I saw the finished shelter.

A full size drawing didn’t help work out how to stand the shelter up.

The Handrail is not a difficult task. Not compared to the shelter or the forthcoming loading chute but it still needs a drawing.

Handrail details

I need to visualize how to actually construct the thing. How do I fix the rails to the posts? How do I fix the posts to the deck? This quick visualization explores the idea of the construction of posts from styrene tube, with a section of rod glued inside them as pins to locate them in the deck. Similarly, the rails will be located in place thanks to pins through the posts. Now I need to spend more time figuring out the jig to drill the holes in the correct place. I hope that once I get through this next batch of thinking time I’ll be able to get started on the handrails soon.