Painting the Roof and Auxiliary Elements of the Faller Station

Although the roof of the Faller station came out of the box sporting some nice burnt out marks, given the technology used to produce it, it still didn't look quite all right and proper painting had to be done. Along with the roof, 4 other element types had to be painted as well: the rain pipes, benches, trash bins and the window sills being mounted on the roof itself.

For the roof itself, the following formula was used: 

- 0.6 Tamiya Yellow (XF-3)

- 0.4 Tamiya Flat Red (XF-7)

- 1.0 Thinner (acrylic)

3 coats were applied, out of which the first was a light one.
For the rain pipes, benches, trash bins and window sills, it was decided to use gray for all of them - one of the reasons being that the box cover image actually had these gray as well. All were simply placed on a sticky tape side up - fixed itself on 2 perpendicular pieces of sticky tape. The "stickiness" was strong enough to hold the pieces down under the air flow of the airbrush. 3M Vinyl masking tape was used on certain parts of the window sills, since those will be glued on - and paint shouldn't get in the way.
The rain pipes only also had 2 coats of Tamiya Smoke, so they get a touch of metallic look.

Final roof color

Auxiliary elements getting ready
to be airbrushed

Bench before being painted

Bench after 2 coats of Tamiya J.N. Grey

Rain pipe detail after painting
with Tamiya J.N. Grey

Rain pipe detail after painting
with Tamiya J.N. Grey and 1 coat
of Tamiya Smoke

Rain pipe detail after painting
with Tamiya J.N. Grey and 2 coats
of Tamiya Smoke

Glueing the Roof on the Faller Station

  Once the decision to have the roof of the main station detachable was made, the next step was how to actually glue this in place. Additionally, painting will also have to be done, since (1) the bare plastic won't look well under any kind of lighting and (2) there needs to be some tooth for the weathering powders to actually adhere to.

  All needed in order to have one continuous piece ready for painting was to glue the main sides of the roof together, followed by the 2 small panels located on each side and also the ridge caps (a long one for the joint of the 2 main sides + 2 smaller ones for each panel-set on the sides).

  The pieces were first washed (a drop of liquid wash detergent added to a some warm water) and completely dried, while also removing some of the burnt plastic that resulted from the laser cutting process, since in some cases this was found right on the joints where adhesive would have been applied. For the 2 main sides and corresponding ridge cap, Bison 5-min Epoxy was used, while for the rest - Bison Plastic Cement. Reading around the web suggested that the epoxy is superior in strength to the plastic cement - albeit a rather short and subjective process on my part, hence the reason for it being used on the main roof sides. The masking tape was only used to keep the side panels together, given that like this they would rest just fine, unable to fall off until the cement set.

  It was also a good chance to test the Proses Magnetic Clamps that I bought one year ago, and they did a really good job in holding the main roof together until the epoxy became solid; luckily enough, there was just enough space between the paper mask and the roof for the underside of the clamps to fit into.

Lighting the Faller Station

There's been some uncertainty about how to fix in place the Faller station, and also how to allow access to the lighting inside. The options were to either make the whole station removable from the layout, or avoid fixing the roofs (station + shed) so these can be removed in the future when needed. The latter was chosen, due to the disadvantages associated with the former, namely "breaking" the earth blend right next to the walls and the track ballast next to the corresponding track-side.

The lamp sockets and bulbs - Faller 180670 - are not included with the station (Faller 110096) as-is but I did purchase 3 of these a while ago. Since the sockets have each 2 holes, 1.5 mm in diameter, I've extended these to 2 mm, since I had plenty of 2mm bolts complete with nuts. The wires will have plenty of space, since the whole building will seat on beams, 2 cm in height, so the track terrain nearby is matched.

The Faller sockets come with pre-drilled holes
of 1.5 mm

Lamp sockets in place

Detail of the lamp socket in the station building,
slightly offset by mistake

Replacing a Viessmann Light Bulb

More than 3 years ago, a Viessmann 6384 railway lamp was bought. Besides aspects such as painting, positioning and wire placement, one thing of interest was how the light bulb is changed, in case it fails.

Removing the plastic hood is rather quick, although some force needs to be applied. Next came taking the light bulb out. This proved more complicated for me, so with help from Viessmann's support, it turns out the brown wire has to be gently pulled inside the mast. Using some sharp tweezers is best, in order to squeeze the tip between the mast's lattice, and pull the wire bit by bit towards the top. After the wire has some some space inside the mast, the light bulb can be further extracted. In first stage, this needs to be done with care until the wire that's not insulated is released from the tube. Then the whole brown wire needs to be extracted via this end (the 6229 replacement bulb comes complete with the wires - one long insulated and one short not insulated - just like the removed one). The red wire is actually soldered to the mast, and the electrical connectivity goes just up to the point where the bulb is inserted. The last picture shows the electrical connectivity between these points.

The lamp before disassembly

Removing the hood

Light bulb extracted so that the
live wire is released

View of the wire inside the mast

Testing that electrical connectivity
is in place between the edge of the
mast and the red wire

Problems Assembling Faller's 110096's Shed Roof

A while ago I've ran into issues assembling the roof of the shed for the Faller 110096 Klingenberg station. I've emailed Faller support at the time, and they were very kind and provided by post - free of charge - a new paper mask and a few elements as well. However it was my fault that I didn't explain my problem very well. Hopefully I will be able to do this below.

 At page 10 of the manual included with the station, the roof must be applied on top of the walls, after the M2 paper mask has been inserted in place. This doesn't work quite ok though. A bit of background: the roof has 2 shoulders underneath; these will "click" in place when applied to the walls of the building. Also, the adjoining wall of the station has 2 grooves, into which the edges of the roof will only slide into provided the shoulders click in place when applied to the shed's walls.The problems start when the shed's paper mask is put in place - once this is done there is no more room for the shoulders to be inserted so that they "click" in place between the shed's walls, since the paper mask takes up that space. Also the grooves in the station wall no longer match the edge of the shed's roof.

One way to solve this would be to cut the paper mask so that the shoulders reach enough depth, but this will mean the structure of the paper mask will be broken, thus losing strength. One workaround would be simply remove the black top of the paper mask, thus assuring the roof's shoulders are no longer blocked, however there is one problem by doing this - light will be installed inside the shed (Faller 180670); the shed's roof is plastic, but doesn't stop light completely, so will run the risk of the roof "glowing" in the night.

Roof shoulders

Shed roof sliding in the station wall's grooves

Shed's paper mask glued and inserted 

Shed roof's shoulders no longer able to "click"

Shed's roof too high due to shoulders hitting the paper mask

Shed's room no longer matching the groove in the station wall,
once the paper mask is applied

Electrical Modifications For Phidget 1012

  Sometimes last year, when I was about to order the remaining boards for input detection (for detectors & points status) I realized that the manufacturer of the board I was about to buy had a new product, capable of twice as many inputs. Namely - the new Phidget 1012 had 16 digital inputs as compared to the old Phidget 1018 board containing only 8. However there's a catch with the new board - it requires an external DC power supply.

  Even though I've previously believed that separate input boards are needed for optical detectors and for the switches' feedback, it turns out they can be handled by the same board. The key is using a ground level selected at the potential of 'brown' (of the Viessmann 5200 transformer). Going back to how the 1012 works - this will show an input as ON if the power supply has its circuit closed by the 1012's ground pin and that specific input (eg for input 0, this will be ON when the MRD1's relay is closed, namely when G and D1 are shorted on the figure below). Note that the DC power supply's polarity DOES matter. All in all, pretty straightforward for the optical detectors. Now for the feedback of switches, there's 'grey' and 'green' which get alternatively connected to the 'yellow' and 'pink' respectively, depending which way the switch is toggled. Since 'yellow' and 'pink' are actually outputs of the Phidget output board (1017), these are simply commanded by the input board's relays, which simply connect the "brown" of the Viesmann 5200 transformer to either 'yellow' or 'pink', respectively. So the key in getting the feedbacks to work with the 1012 as well is to have ground always connected to the same potential of "brown", which is made through a simple connection, as indicated in the picture below.

  Initially I had trouble understanding how this works, simply because both DC and AC notions apparently got together in the same figure. However the "brown" (BN) is a simple connection, there's no alternative current flowing through this diagram. It's simply that one can choose his arbitrary ground for the direct current.

  Special thanks go to John Parsons of Azatrax - the manufacturer of the optical detectors used on this layout - who was kind enough to point me in the right direction with the Phidget 1012.

More "Earth" Boards

In the end, 3 boards, each containing 8 squares, were built to get a sense of the resulting color during the tests described here. The last square of the 3rd board was rather dark, and - given blue pigment was added incrementally to each - I was confident each of the shades could be replicated. Then the day came when I actually wanted to produce a specific color, in order to patch some of the earth already fixed on the layout. I chose the most similar shade on the test boards, which meant a concentration of 4.2% blue ultramarine pigment in the standard base formula I've been using. However applying it in just one coat resulted in a color more similar to a 2.8% square.

Given things were totally different from what I was expecting, 2 more test boards were built. This time however, the increment percent of blue ultramarine pigment was increased from around 0.3% (in the first 3 boards) to an average of 0.7%. Still 2 coats were used. The sifting would be done until the new specs of formula barely get "wet". However this time the upper portion of each square was left soaked on purpose. It turns out that these soaked spots actually will dry sensibly lighter than the rest of sifted formula, which has an important contribution to the outcome.

  Thinking about what could have gone wrong in the first boards, it might have been some already prepared base formula, which could have been done without the electronic weighing scale. Also, given the final percentage of the last test patch went up to 10% ultramarine blue, I've also considered how this percentage is calculated. So far in the test boards done, formula was already mixed for the previously completed square. This had a known percentage of blue pigment, which has been gradually increased. In my calculations for the next square, the percent of added pigment will only be computed given the total weight of the existing formula. Adding the blue pigment's weight to the equation wasn't necessary since the difference in orders was quite important (30mg for 15g). However given that bigger and bigger percentages were being used - now reaching 10% - this had to be revisited. Simply think of having 10 grams of the formula already available; we need to get the final percentage to 10% blue pigment. The simplest way would be to consider adding blue pigment in an amount equivalent to 10% of the formula's weight. In our example - 1 gram blue pigment. However the resulting formula now weighs 11 grams. Hence the pigment's correct percentage is 9.09% - becoming quite far off from what we had in mind.

  So doing a little math, we'll first consider C the existing's formula weight, X the weight of blue pigment that needs to be added to get to the desired p percentage of blue ultramarine pigment. The equation thus becomes X / (C + X) = p. This becomes 1 / (C/X + 1) = 1/p. Which eventually becomes X = C / (1/p - 1).

  Turning to our example, the needed weight of blue pigment to be added to reach a percentage of 10% is in fact C/9, which amounts to 1.11g. Computing the resulting percentage yields 1.11g / (10 + 1.11g) which comes really close to 10 (9,999%).