My New York & Atlantic layout

[P5se Camelback]

Thank you, but to be honest, as stated above I can’t take credit for the idea. I only adapted and simplyfied the design of the Fast Track BullFrog turnout control and due to building it using metal instead of wood, I could reduce the number of parts needed.

Kurt ... There are no totally new ideas ... only new applications of existing principles. That's where the creativity comes in.

By switching materials and thereby reducing the number of parts involved, you have improved on the concept and any Corporate Director of Engineering or Director of Purchasing would be pleased, but the Director of Manufacturing would be the happiest, as he would have fewer parts to maintain in stock. And fewer parts means less assembly time which translates to increased output. You are the Corporate Hero and will receive a small stipend of appreciation for your efforts and possibly a plaque for your office wall (at least that's how it used to happen when I was still in the corporate world, back in the last century! )

Innovation coupled with economy of materials ... that combo wins the prize every time. I once redesigned a small hand-held data entry device enclosure to replace a dozen screws and several custom brackets by designing the "fasteners" into the part itself - the circuit board and small power switch snapped into one half, the micro-motion keypad and digital display snapped into the other half and the two halves snapped together ... no fasteners were presented to the end user ... you had to know just where to squeeze to get it to open. The techs loved it!

The injection molding tooling cost a bit more at the outset (due to a decrease in tolerances from +/- 0.05 to +/- 0.005 to achieve a close fit between the molded-in snapping detents) but the reduction of the extra parts more than made up for the initial increased cost of tooling and when it was all said and done, over the entire life of the product, profits were increased merely by reducing the cost of parts and the cost to manufacture! Of course, that was my goal from the very beginning ... I had looked at all those screws and at the cost of buying the custom brackets from some vendor and at the people on the assembly line and thought ... "There are pennies to be saved here!" [My first wall plaque plus a few hundred dollars stipend ... cool!]

... so ... Kudos to you, Young Master Kurt!

A job well done!