Home-made Semaphore Signals

As mentioned by Carl in another thread, I did indeed put together a thread on making my own semaphore signal based on an idea pinched from a member of the 16mm ngm group - whose name, and regrettably therefore his web-page describing it in more detail, escapes me. If anyone can chip in with the guy's name and/or web address, that would be very useful thank you.

Basically the signal post comprises one or more lengths of copper tubing, and joints to suit the desired format. The signal arms, you will not be surprised to learn, were made from tin-cans bent and snipped and generally mangled into some sort of signal shape. I actually cut mine out from a piece of tin-can folded in two, thus to double the thickness and also lend a bit more rigidity via the fold:



As you can see, the arms are simply screwed into place. They do move, but the operation is manual.

This is how the setup looked in situ, almost a year ago now:





Today, I took some more pics to show how the steel of the signal arms had fared in the wonderful weather we have had:



One more: the OBB set headed up by no 298.56 gets the 'right away' at Chipside. Yet more evidence that the MoW gang have been slacking somewhat when it comes to the job of clearance of vegetation:

Thanks for posting.
Interesting use of plumbing parts Clive which throws up possibilities for other things.
What diameter of pipe did you use please?

Standard (UK?) 15mm copper pipe and fittings - these days of course one can obtain plastic pipe and indeed fittings to the same spec.

Thanks Clive.

15mm is not a standard here would you believe.

We have a multitude of sizes starting at 8mm and going up in 2mm increments missing out 15.

I might try some of your signals using 10 or 12mm pipe work.
I feel an evening with the blowlamp and solder coming on next week....

Microbore (6mm diameter) and 10mm diameter is also commonly used by housebuilders in the UK.
If my memory serves me right, plumbers tend to bend these two smaller diameters with a simple tool as opposed to using elbow or "T" joints.

I would think that 10mm would have probably looked better - but as I had some 15mm stuff lying idle in the back of the garage in my 'plumbing bits' drawer, I used that. Micro-bore, I suspect, would have potential to suffer damage from a poorly placed size 10...

Also, it is perhaps worth noting that I didn't solder any permanent joints, as the fittings were a sufficiently tight push-fit not to warrant it. I guess an advantage of that would be realised if I ever felt the need to alter the configuration, I could do so without a huge amount of trauma.

standard bore throughout our house is 14mm. Of course it is complicated by the fact that the french use the diameter of the internal bore whereas UK measures outside (or is it the other way round...?)

Mikey

I think in the UK at least, the dimension pertains to the inner bore of the pipe

Hi Clive thanks for the photos.

That's given me real food for thought! As Carl says we have a plethora of tube sizes here going up in 2mm increments, I think 8mm would look really "scale" for a number of structures - a water tower possibly?

I also wish I hadn't thrown away my box of 15mm when I left the UK, I've plumbed our house in 16mm plastic so can't raid the plumbing box here!