DETAILING AND TESTING

I routed power

to the servo by wedging the tips of the red and black power wires between closed switch points. I then took a deep breath and touched the two wires that would soon run to a pushbutton. The spout moved! I could finish constructing and painting the kit.

I attached the BLI spout-balancing chain and counterweights to the spout when it was in the down position by gluing an “ear” from a Kadee coupler-box lid to the top of the spout using canopy cement and looping a short length of fine wire through it and a link at the bottom arc of the chain. The conical roof is attached with dabs of Woodland Scenics’ Accents Glue, often used to temporarily position figures, so I can regain access to the electronics and servo if needed. I didn’t use the safety cage on the ladder, as despite the NKP’s reputation for safety, none of the water tank photos I have show one.

I then ran a Berkshire tender under the spout, and lo and behold, when activated the spout dropped right onto the deck of the tender. But this caused enough play in the spout mechanism to pop the J-shaped connection out of the end of the spout. I worked the hook back into its slot with tweezers and placed the tank base on shims that ensure the spout stops a scale foot or so above the tender deck. This also gave a foot more clearance between the spout in the raised position and any high-wide freight loads.

BLI’s factory sound is loud and sounds good, but I don’t care for human voices on layout recordings as a rule. So my intention was to use the Miller Models (now ITT Products) sound system I already had installed. An engineer would pull up to the tank and push the “Water” and “Spout” buttons, or maybe I could combine them with a momentary DPDT toggle switch.

But when I timed the two recordings, the BLI version played almost twice as long as the ITT products version — which is good, as the whole idea is to slow things down a bit. There was no way to synchronize them. Fortunately, there’s lots of room in the Tichy tank for the servo, electronics, and a speaker.

As an experiment — remember, this whole project was an experiment — I simply dropped the speaker into the tank rather than securely mounting it in an enclosure. I then popped on the conical roof and fired it up. It was still plenty loud enough.

I extended two pairs of wires down through holes in the scenery and benchwork and hooked them up to the DCC buses and the BLI pushbutton controller mounted on the fascia — and nervously pushed the button. Squeaking sounds of the spout coming down and motion in front of the tank spelled success!