Sunday, August 10, 2008

A Control Panel for the LoCo



I thought it might take all of an hour to cobble together this control panel. The cover is a recycled shelf I built years ago, the angle braces were cut off the ends of cedar I found in the scrap box, and the underside is a piece of MDB left over from another project. It was all nearly ready-made; how could it possibly take longer than an hour to put together? I figured I'd be playing with trains all afternoon.

It didn't take an hour. It took four. I still don't know how.

But it's all together now except for the soldering. The flip-top makes it much easier to get at the electrical components than when they were all hidden under the bench top and I had to crawl underneath to get at them. I'm still not happy with the bracket for hanging the hand-held, but that's something I can improve later. It works for now.