10th May 2012: The first photo shows the underside of the new panel before installation in the console. The second shows the back of the new panel in position, and the last photo shows the front of the finished panel mounted in the console.
A considerable number of wiring alterations have been carried out to the base boards, then a full functional test of the new panel revealed it to work faultlessly first time. This therefore concludes this improvement to Newchapel Junction.
23rd April 2012: The two halves of the new panel have been united and the wiring between the two is complete. The new panel is now ready for fitting in the control console and once wiring alterations have been done to the relevant baseboards it will be ready for testing.
10th April 2012: The panel faceplate diagram has been drawn up, coloured and laminated. The second photo shows the diagram in place on the panel base-plate. The holes for the LEDs and buttons etc were made accurately using punches. The third photo shows the underside of the panel base plate where the wiring has been completed. The bunch of wires coming off the panel base-plate will be terminated to the relay PCBs seen in the fourth and fifth photos. The last photo shows the wiring half finished on the relay PCBs. The bunch of wires coming off this base-plate will be terminated to outgoing plug couplers that will take the circuits to the baseboards.
1st April 2012: All 7 Printed Circuit Board (PCB) units have been made and the equipment soldered onto them. The first 2 PCBs have been mounted in place on the aluminium sheet which will be attached to the back of the control panel faceplate, thus keeping the panel and controlling wiring/circuitry as one complete unit that is easily removable from the control console.
14th March 2012: The current panel that controls the goods yard is shown in the first photo. The new goods yard can be seen turning off the bottom of the diagram labelled ‘New Yard’. The new goods yard is currently controlled using a separate control panel as it was built as an extension to the original yard.
The new control panel faceplate has been designed as seen in the second photo. This incorporates the new goods yard, and will allow us to test our new design for semi-automatic route selection before we rebuild the main station panel. Instead of having individual point switches, there will be one button for each siding, and when a button is pressed, the relevant points will automatically be set for the siding required.
The aluminium sheet that forms the panel base plate has been cut out and using a newly-installed DRO (Digital Read-Out) computer on the vertical milling machine, all the holes for the route lights and control buttons/switches etc. have been drilled quickly, easily and very accurately!