My small BR423 fahrpult

[gazz]

Hello again everyone, i haven't been on here for a while due to medical problems and other things in my life, i do have a full drivers desk from a Wittenberger Steurerwagen, but i have yet to assemble it

But i have been spending a lot of time in bed lately with my back problems, So i put a spare PC in the bedroom connected to the plasma TV on the wall, and i started playing with train driving simulators again, i bought a rail driver to make it more fun, but owning some real driving controls i found the rail driver too much toy like.

So over the past few weeks i built this:


It is based on a BR423 driving desk, but only with the switches commonly used when driving the train, it is sized to sit next to me in the bed (where a girlfriend would lay if i had one anymore and i may one day get a hospital type bed table and fix it to that.

It is still a work in progress, nothing is wired up yet, and i need to make up and add the switch legends,

The switches are genuine Schalter units, i got some 'spare' ones when i was in Germany collecting the Wittenberger Steurerwagen driving desk,
The direction switch is an industrial switch, i made up a legend plate for it and have connected a potentiometer to the switch's spindle,
The double row of coloured switches are for things like announcements, exiting the simulator etc (i hate having to use the mouse for anything in a simulator)
The 3 door buttons are large industrial motor start switches from a scrapped pump panel, rated for about 40 amps at 415 volts... so plenty spare for a 5 volt signal to the computer i think

And the power/brake lever, i made it up from scratch, it is a 110mm diameter disc of aluminium, i used a mill to carve out a pocket for a 'micro' switch (taken from one of the schalter switches, so it's nice and clicky) and the knob (made from delrin on my lathe) is connected to a rod inside the outer tube so it presses down to activate the switch (for sifa).
I polished the aluminium disc, but really could do with anodising it black.. will try that for the next one i make.

Then i used my local Hackspace's laser cutter to cut parts for the frame of the lever, using 5mm plastic sheet, the side frame parts are doubled up, so giving me a 10mm frame, plus a notch plate giving me a centre notch, full service and emergancy brake position notches,
And a gear drive to a potentiometer so the levers swing moved the poti as much as possible.


Please excuse Caramel the Rat, he was doing some maintenance on the lever when i took the photo

This is a shot of the notch plate and gears for the poti:


I am afraid i did not get any photo's of the lever as i was building it, as i was not sure it would work properly, but it feels quite nice to move.

I also used the laser cutter to cut the top of the desk, the red plastic sheet was donated to the hackspace so is free, otherwise i would have used a blue or black plastic.

I need to find out exactly what should go on the switch legends now, i have one of those thermal tape printers that connects to the computer, so i will make the legends up using that, and the power/brake lever's legend i will probably make with my vinyl cutter,

oh, and the laminate for the top which is an almost exact blue as used on real driving desks, i found in a skip!!!

[gazz]

I have been playing around making the switch legends up for my small driving desk, originally i used one of those PC connectable tape label printers, but mine only takes 12mm tapes, so with the margins it leaves blank they were too small i felt,

I then made the blank black strips on my vinyl cutter and stuck tape labels on them, using a white on clear tape, looked much better but the power/brake lever D shaped plate didn't come out too well using the vinyl cutter (it looked bad with tape labels stuck on for the words, and the text was too small for the cutter to cut out neatly.

So i got a few sheets of inkjet printable vinyl and spent today getting the print and cut feature to work on my vinyl cutter to die cut the labels.

As this desk is only loosely based on a BR423 driving desk, i don't have all the switches and buttons it should have, so i had to make up my own legend text for my switches.
But as i am English and only know a small amount of German, can someone look at my legend text and tell me which ones i should have spelled differently... i'm thinking the 'Sanden' one should be 'Sand'... but i saw a photo of a trains driving desk with the word 'Sanden' for that switch,
Horn.. i wasn't sure if it should be 'Hupe' etc.

[Sebastian N.]

Nice, I like the 'clean' look of it. Haven't found any spelling mistakes either, the labels also vary from type to type. "Scheinwerfer" is sometimes called "Abblenden" or "Abblendung", "Horn" is correct - "Hupe" would be on a car . Sometimes it's also called "Makrophon".

Do you also have a Sifa Pedal? It adds quite much to it

[gazz]

No sifa pedal as i built this little desk to use in bed
but the power/brake lever's knob does depress a switch, so i will use that as the sifa button.

Makrophon.... that means horn? now it makes sense, i was looking on my real Wittenberger steurerwagen desk for the horn button, but couldn't find one, but there is one labelled Makrophon, i thought it was for the microphone... but now i realise that would be spelt 'Mikrofon' i've learnt something new today, thanks