The following article, written and illustrated by Stewart McSporran, describes his experience of building a MODRATEC Lever Frame for his 'Loch Awe' model railway. The article is reproduced here by kind permission of the The 2mm Scale Association who published it in 'The 2mm Magazine'.

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Building the MODRATEC Lever Frame - Stewart McSporran

Fitting the Micro Switches

Fitting the micro switches is pretty straight forward. The only tricky part is ensuring that the switches are soldered to their PCB at the correct angle. I found that a cocktail stick under the switches' rear end does this just nicely! (Figure 15)

Figure 15: Using a Cocktail Stick to Set the Micro Switches

Each micro switch is individually adjusted using set screws, Figure 16.

The switches are only rated at 50mA, and I intend to use memory wire actuation that draws around 200mA, so an intermediate relay of some description will be required.

Figure 16: Lower Rear View Showing Micro Switch Adjusters [Click for full size image]

And Finally

Now that the unit is built and tested you can put a pretty diagram into it, Figure 17, and show it off to your friends. I used Microsoft Publisher to prepare my drawing, if anyone wants a copy of the Publisher file as a starting point for their own layouts then drop me an e-mail. [Stewart has kindly provided the relevant files for download: Click here - ed]

This was a fun exercise and might just encourage me to actually get on with the railway side of things.

Figure 17: The Finished Article [Click for full size image]

... and Terminally

People on the VAG occasionally ask about technical drawing programs. I used a very easy to use, yet powerful, free program to draw the diagrams for this article. You can obtain the free version of CadStd from http://www.cadstd.com/. It doesn't do everything, but the Pro version comes close, and only costs $25.

Links

The 2mm Scale Association.
Contact Stewart McSporran.
Download the SigScribe4 file for Loch Awe. Needs SigScribe4 version 1.1 or greater.
Download the Publisher files for the Loch Awe Signal Diagram.

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... a great kit which in my view has plenty of authenticity from the 'big' railway whilst being perfect for the model railway. (Chris)