Well, that took a while longer to make than I had hoped! Not least because it is not the only signal I am working on at the moment.

Although the drawing did not show a landing in front of the balance weights, i felt that it was likely one would be provided given that these need maintenance at times. Hence this was formed from some L section and an etched slats and provides a useful point to secure the ladder too.

The issue with signals with dolls is that each doll is in effect its own signal; it has a ladder, arm and lamp assembly. But worse than this is that it is also necessary to get the movement to transfer over to the doll so there is even more than a seperate signal per doll. There are a number of ways the prototype used to get the movement to transfer and in this case the signal uses L shaped elbows. Sadly these are more challenging to make as there are more working components and to be prototypical they out to be little more than a couple of mm in size.

A key trick in making signals is to spray paint as much of the signal as possible. Because the components are generally fine any excess thickness of paint will quickly make the modelling crude. As a result of this, I now generally try to make the ladders detachable. In this case there is a rod attached to the top of the doll that a tube at the top of the ladder slips over, with prongs at the base.

So here it is a finished (except for a tie rod which I fortgot to paint so is to be fitted shortly).

And as is de rigeur for a blog post on the building of signals, here is a video of it in operation.