Fishermen
Inspiration for my fishermen, which I'd originally made for the Mountain Vista Railroad, was drawn directly from the fisherman Rick Spano made for his Sceniced and Undecided:
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The principle of operation is the same in both cases: an irregularly-shaped cam moves a monofilament line attached to a flexible model fishing pole. However, I added a little twist that I don't recall ever seeing animated, at least in N Scale: a fisherman holding up his prize, and the fish is wriggling. For the Mountain Vista, the mechanism needed to be very compact, because the water level where the animation would go was only a half-inch above the layout base.
For the fishing figure, I had to drill a #80 hole endwise into his hand so he could hold the pole (above left). I bonded very fine nylon monofilament to the pole provided by Preiser and kinked it at the end of the pole. For the figure holding a fish, I had to drill a #95 hole vertically through his hand for the 0.005" wire (above right).
I made the mechanism with a low-RPM geared micro-motor, three gears and a cam ring (above). One end of a lever rides the irregular cam shape (below left); the other end has a screw mount to facilitate attaching the fishing line (below right), as well as to make it adjustable, since tolerances are surprisingly tight owing to the very small movement involved.
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After reviewing the above video, I decided to revise the wriggling fish part. It now utilizes an eccentric crank device to make the motion a little more irregular and natural.
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In May 2021, I installed the device permanently on the White River & Northern X.
After I finished the river, the black finishing pole totally disappeared, and the effect was lost. So, I applied some chrome paint to the pole to make it stand out. Sadly the mechanism is rather noisy, so it's not an animation I'd run for very long.
New Venue
This animation is now part of a diorama, Field of Dreams.
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