This is the distant signal at the west end of my Battledown Flyover Model Railway. The signal is made from a Ratio LNER upper quadrant signal pack UQ/80 with a customised platform. The lattice pole style and upper quadrant signal arm of the LNER signal is reasonably close in style to a Southern signal.
On the other side of the embankment is the Basingstoke to Salisbury main line and two storage sidings. When needing access to that area my arm passes over the signal. (you know what is coming).
Unbeknown to me my woolly cardigan sleeve caught and locked onto the finial and signal arm. It was carried across the room where it dropped off onto the floor, closely followed by my foot which crushed it beyond repair!
I gathered up the bits that I could see but nowhere could I find the signal arm. Now, I do have spare parts from the kit but not another lattice post. Time to design a post and fire up my resin 3D printer to make it.
I'll recover detailed parts from the crushed signal and use a spare signal arm from the kit.
I use FreeCad for design and Lychee Slicer to create the 3D print file using its auto support creation feature. My printer is a Creality Halot Mage with Anycubic water washable resin.
The lattice network came out well but both ends were distorted and there was a bit of warping. The latter can be corrected during the UV curing process but the end distortions were considered too bad.
The simple solution was to manually add extra supports to the ends and print again. By the way, print time for this model is 1 hour 12 minutes.
If I need to make another one in the future I think I can get away with the lattice spars being 0.5 mm wide instead of 0.7 mm that I had designed as this will give improved definition, especially at the top of the pole.
Here is the new signal (photo right). In future, when leaning over it to reach the other side of the embankment, I must remember to remove it first - once bitten twice shy!
For me, semaphore signal assembly is the most difficult job on the model railway. It is so fiddly to achieve an operational signal arm.
Postscript
Lost signal arm found. Well, only half of it. Weirdly, in the front passenger floor well of my car! Can only assume it was stuck in my sleeve and dropped off when I changed gear. But where is the other half?
