Site and Fencing The substation was de- signed and placed on a base made from 1/8-inch Masonite. It is remov- able for maintenance should any damage oc- cur while it is in service on the railroad. The fence is a commercial kit made by Dennis Bren- nan. If I had to build the fence again I would con- struct it from soldered brass to increase its durability.
work as designed, the arms don’t work unless you first separate them by hand. This will not be happening on the layout, so it was just for my satisfaction. The bases are styrene, not soldered brass, so they went together very easily.
Medium Voltage Construction
Here was another opportunity to do an all-brass construction. I don’t have sheet metal equip- ment, so instead of bending up a four-sided box with only one edge to solder, I chose the hard road, making separate sides and soldering each corner to a piece of small brass angle. This was absolutely the most difficult way to do this task. If I were to do it again, I would at least bend a mounting flange on each side, so there was only one solder joint to make. Ideally, the box should be laid out as one piece and folded up like a cardboard box. Having the double-sided joint at each corner was a recipe for disaster even with the resistance solder- ing iron. The roof has a slight peak to it to separate the insula- tors. Again, I would have added the flange to the roof piece in- stead of trying to make an edge- to-edge solder joint. The front and rear access doors are an- other layer of thin brass sheet. In all the control boxes, I made con-
66 RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
vincing door handles by flatten- ing a piece of 0.032-inch brass wire and then bending it over to form the handle that is soldered into a hole in the door.
Medium Voltage Gantry
The MV gantry is also a brass fabrication. The hardest thing about this was jigging the piec- es to maintain squareness dur- ing soldering. I first tried to sol- der these larger pieces of brass channel with a mini-torch with- out much success. I then used the RSU, and it worked very well. There are additional brass bars at the top to support the input and output insulators, and two channels across the top to sup- port the MV disconnects. Like some of the other pieces of ap- paratus, brass plates were sol- dered to the bottoms of the ver- tical channels to simulate steel mounting plates.
All the apparatus, includ- ing the main transformer, have simulated concrete foundations comprised of two layers of fine- grained Masonite, epoxied to the base plates, painted a nice con- crete color. These are held to the sub-base with Titebond glue.
Medium Voltage Disconnects
These are relatively small compared to the other parts of
the project. Again, scaled ABB drawings provided the details. I used U-shaped brass channel with brackets made out of the very thin material left over from frets of photo-etched detail parts. I wanted to make these operate too, and like the HV Disconnects, my reach exceeded my grasp. The MV Disconnect works with two fixed insulators on each end and a swinging insulator in the middle that drags.
Site Preparation The entire substation sits on a base consisting of a piece of 1/8-inch Masonite and two dif- ferent thicknesses of foam core. I learned from expert modeler Ashe Rawls that you should avoid permanently fastening buildings to a layout for many reasons (re- pair, removal for sale, and so forth). The way you get around the need to glue them down is by building a form-fitted receptacle. Wrap the model’s base in either Saran Wrap or Stretch-n-Seal to keep the plaster from sticking, and then plaster right up to the edge using whatever method you like. When set, pull the model out of the foundation “hole,” and use ground cover on the plaster. After placing the model on the layout, you can re-apply ground cover to hide the seam without gluing it in place.
Lighting the Model
I made LED fixtures using 3/32-inch outside diameter brass tubing with a hand-made lamp housing. Again, I probably made more work for myself using Su- per Sculpey heat-hardening clay to form the housings. The light comes from high-intensity, 2mm LEDs wired two in series with one 330-ohm resistor between them for a 12 VDC source. The positive LED lead is insulated and runs down the center of the brass tube. The negative lead is clipped short and soldered to the upper edge of the brass tube.
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