Reason I chose this

The reason why I chose this project of a Railway Interlocking is because of my interest in trains and history involving British Columbias industries such as many different operations of industries that include railway lines.

A railway interlocking can be sumarized as a traffic light for trains.

. A Rock Island Railroad interlocking tower unknown date.

Progress

My project began with the drawing of design for my project. Second came the search for a piece of plywood to put all of my project on thankfully I had a piece of wood in my garage that was  a foot wide but I had to cut it to the length of 5 feet for the project and then drew the design onto the plywood itself but didnt do anything to it for a while afterwards.

The next big step was gluing side pieces of wood to the board so I could have space to put the wiring on the underside of the board later. I had to mark out where I would put holes to feed wires for each part of electrical controls, following drilling the holes I covered the top of the board with a coat of paint for a base layer for later painting.                               

 

After painting I was taught how to wire up the signals required for the lights to work.

After this I left the project sitting for a while as I had to get some of the materials required to make the project not look like a plank of plywood.

The following weekend was the day of nailing all the track down and wiring up the track and wires for operations on the signals, switches, and trains the power hook ups were simple afterwards just being two wires that connect to a DC power pack with AC for accessories (lights and switches). Operations of the lights is a simple switch that has the options of three settings and no off setting so the lights stay on as long as the power pack is on. The signal controls have simply been drilled straight into the board instead of having them on the sides.

Later additions

With the board now in operation it required me to get scenery materials such as fake grass, bushes, trees, cars, gravel, and buildings. I picked up the materials I didnt have from my grandparents house and brought them home to use on my project. I did the rest of my project on a saturday two weeks before the fair putting cardboard down for a road followed by a layer of brown paint on the wood with a light sprinkling of grass foam and what im pretty sure was green sawdust. After placing down all of the grass it was joined by bushes of foam and lichen in different green colours. After the major scenery was complete I could focus on the roads painting them black for later street lines being applied to it. I had to drill more holes into the board to allow for tree to be placed on it for better scenery. I later added the final bits being a station and interlocking tower followed by an assortment of 1:87 scale cars.

When I took this photo I had packed up the loose parts of the project so they wouldnt be broken by my little brother.

This is my project thanks for reading this.