The Electrical Volunteers Report Sunday 7th March 2010.

[asbibby]

Saturday saw Jonathan come in to finish off painting four station lights for Summerseat, they will be fitted in the next few weeks.
Today Sunday, Jonathan, John, Clive and myself met in our workshop to decide what to do today. The workshop phone rang and Malcolm Vickers asked us to go down to Baron Street steam shed to change flurescent light fittings, quite a few of the fittings are original BR ones.
Jonathan and myself set off to Baron Street to tackle the lights, whilst John and Clive went to Ramsbottom to finish off the corridor lights in the station, once this job was completed John came to help us at Baron Street.
Hughie from C & W had brought to our workshop a large clock which he had bought in a car boot sale in Preston, Clive stripped the clock down to see how the clock mechanism worked.
The motor was a stepping motor which relies on thirty second pulses to keep accurate time, this will have to have a pulse system made for the clock to work again at one of our stations.
Clive popped back to Ramsbottom to fit a globe on the corridor light.
The Baron Street shed job will take quite some time checking all the eight foot fittings to see if we can get some of them working again, we have new tubes and starters.
Thirty, six foot flurescent fittings are available for us to fit to replace ones that are past their sell by date.
We started in Ian Riley's workshop first and used our tower scaffold to reach the fittings safely, we managed to repair four units and to replace three units with new ones. It looks has though we will be on this job for a few weeks

[XTMike]

Alan

There are a couple of qualified electricians who attend mid week PWay work and could possibly put up the light fittings if you want to discuss this with Bob Johnson who plans/organises the work.

[asbibby]

Alan

There are a couple of qualified electricians who attend mid week PWay work and could possibly put up the light fittings if you want to discuss this with Bob Johnson who plans/organises the work.

Thanks for that information Mike i will contact Malcolm Vickers to ask him to liase with Bob Johnson, this job is a high priorty job so any help will be great.
I rang Malcolm the two electricians are at present working on the lighting in Castlecroft Museum for Malcolm, so he is aware of them, Thanks.

[Union Pacific]

What was the result/verdict of Hughies electric clock? is it now working?

[asbibby]

What was the result/verdict of Hughies electric clock? is it now working?

The clock originally was probably one of a few clocks which would have had a central clocking system, i.e. two pulses a minute which stepped on the stepping mechanism in the clock.
This pulse system will have to be replicated or a new clock mechanism fitted, the mechanism in the clock works OK we tested it, so it is a matter of replicating in an electronic fashion the two pulses a minute, watch this space!

[marflow]

In reply to the question about the slave clock.

We could get a synchronous motor with a cam which trips a mcroswitch twice on each rev. In the past, I've tried this and the microswitch tends to fail 20,160 activations per week!

Cheapest way I can think of at the moment is a little PIC costs about 98p! (basically a very small microprocessor: it only has 8 legs!) write a program to issue a half second pulse every 30 seconds. An output from the PIC would control a power transistor in the supply to the slave clock. Further refinements would be a way of advancing by one hour for BST, GMT would have to be done by stopping the clock for an hour or sending it forward 11 hours. Would also need a single step button to get the clock to the right time.

Visions of the platform 3/4 clock! but then that has stepper motors which can go back or forward. That uses a small micro. Not really that much different to the proposed PIC.

First job, though is to get a new front (perspex) for the clock and a new minute hand (Hilda Baker?) and get Jonathan's magic on the paintwork.

[Union Pacific]

I wish I hadn't asked now.