Water Tower
First Generation
This is perhaps the oldest animation I'd ever devised, originally conceived for the White River & Northern I, which dates from the early 1970s! I have only a few grainy Polaroids of that ancient effort, so I must work from memory. The water tower was scratchbuilt; inside the tank was a wire that came up through the base and into the tank. The wire was bent into a crank shape inside the tank, and a pair of threads were tied to it; these threads passed through holes in the tank and wrapped around a water spout made from solder, for extra weight. Considering how poorly it was designed and built, it worked fairly well, although it was operated by hand.
Second Generation
Fast-forward nearly fifty years, I'm staring at a water tank I'd built for the Mountain Vista Railroad, while it sat on the White River & Northern X. And quite suddenly it struck me that I could do it all over again, only better, naturally.
I wasn't going to animate the water tower, but over time it grew on me. After all, I'd animated it on the original White River & Northern all those years ago. And then, there's the animated fuel oil column right across from it. The process went quite smoothly on the morning of 20 June 2021.
The first thing I did was remove the roof, followed by the spout frame. I installed two short lengths of brass microtubing right were the spout support pulleys were (above).
Then I made a hinge from brass wire soldered into a T shape and two more bits of tubing (above). I bonded the hinge to the spout frame, then bonded the spout to the hinge (below).
Inside the tank I made a pivoting frame that lined up with the two short tubes entering the tank. I threaded a piece of fine monofilament thread through the hanger on the spout and through the two short tubes, then attached the ends to the pivoting frame inside using two bits of tubing I crimped onto the ends of the pivoting frame wires (below).
The spout lowers by gravity (thanks to the solid pewter casting), and raises via a monofilament thread tied to the pivoting frame and runs out the bottom of the tank through brass microtubing, where it's linked to an eccentric crank on a geared motor (below). Incidentally, the resistor is a dynamic brake to keep the motor from coasting.
A hard stop inside the tank prevents the pivoting frame from being pulled too far back; otherwise, gravity can't lower the spout. I colored the monofilament with a sharpie so it was more visible.
The principle of the mechanism's function is illustrated above. (Omitted for clarity are the tank and the geared motor at the bottom.) The H-shaped part is the pivoting frame; its purpose is to place even tension on the threads attached to the spout, and keep friction to a minimum. The other end of the thread is attached to a crank.
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The water tower currently resides on the Where She Sleeps diorama.
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