Large Scale Central

1930-40 ciity water tower

Been working on this project on and off for quite a while, other than the actual building of the tank, tower and catwalk I have spent a ton of time trying to make a solar powered red blinking light for the top, simple it is solar it’s not. Trying to utilize my pathway light circuit was my down fall. The blinking LED I chose uses a IC in it to cause it to blink, the voltage boosting components of the pathway light messed up the IC and caused the LED to light but not blink. After numerous attempts to over come this I finally found a fellow by the name of Josehf Murrhison with"Instructables" that is a wizard with the subject and he already had developed a circuit for one. So after obtaining the correct parts I built one, didn’t work, some due to ordering wrong parts to placing in the circuit incorrectly and so on, finally got that straight and it still wasn’t working, a day or two would go by and Josehf would suggest something else and I kept trying and I must say Josehf has the patients of Jobe. He finally got the same LED that I was using and discovered that the electric components were using enough current to drop the LED out of the operating range, he had me add a 3rd battery and problem cured. It’s been sitting in a dark location for 3 weeks now and still blinking with very little recharge. I the mean time I designed and built a ladder out of 1/16" brass wire and soldered it up and it came out pretty fair considering 10’ rule. Last week I’ve gotten tied up with the “MIK” challenge but hope to get back to the water tower shortly. Keep you posted, Bill

ladderladder painted

That’s a cool build, Bill.

Sounds like the electronics have been a bit of an adventure. (https://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)

Dan Hilyer said:

That’s a cool build, Bill.

Thanks, lot of fun and great learning experience

Nice, I’d like one but doubt I could build the base.

So were are Yakko, Wakko and Dot?

tower

bent base

Jerry Barnes said:

Nice, I’d like one but doubt I could build the base.

Me either, I used a lawn ornament cut down, the tube, cone top and tank base came from plastruct as couldn’t find right size pvc pipe to make the tank from due to the size of the tower top when I cut it down, had I gone another level farther down I could have used available PVC pipe but then the tower would have been even shorter, the fun part was the ladder, Bill

David Maynard said:

So were are Yakko, Wakko and Dot? Sorry David that went over my head, Bill

I am the assistant manager of a public water utility, have been in the business since 1996, So this is a subject close to my heart.

Bill Barnwell said:

David Maynard said:

So were are Yakko, Wakko and Dot? Sorry David that went over my head, Bill

Sorry. Animaniacs was an animated show with the Warner Brothers and Sister living in the water tower on the Warner movie lot.

That makes more sense, guess I led a sheltered life, LOL

Clever of you Bill, I’ll keep an eye out for a good base.

I found I had a suitable(well to me) base. Any other photos and descriptions? Thought there was more than this. I’ll look some more.

Jerry Barnes said:

I found I had a suitable(well to me) base. Any other photos and descriptions? Thought there was more than this. I’ll look some more.

Jerry if you go onto pinterest and search billbarnwell09 you can see all my pictures, and I did a couple of explanations on GRW just recently on the forum section, if you need more just let me know, Bill

I found the pictures. Not sure what you mean by GRW.

Little late now but that was for garden railways magazine