This month for KSEL has been one to remember.
Although this month was not filled with lots of hands-on DIY work, it did entail lots of more intricate engineering.
If you don’t already know, KSEL’s carriage lives at the top of an acre garden in a very secluded part covered by trees and hedgerows. Because of this, the carriage is almost always dark and ill-lit, making it a task and a half to try and work inside on detailed pieces of work.
Upon the renovation of the carriage, the team decided fairly early on that in order for us to be able to work sufficiently inside the carriage, and for us to be able to recreate it as best we could, we would need to implement some sort of light source and get a power source to the carriage. So we dug up the garden and laid a trench to run power to the carriage.
Originally, when the carriage was made, the lanterns would’ve been paraffin lanterns which would have been hung from the ceiling and lit when it was dark. The team decided that, because of this, it would be a good idea to recreate the paraffin lanterns as best we could or buy some online.
This proved much more complicated than expected.
Not only do paraffin lamps for the carriage not exist, but nor does anyone capable of re-creating them for the carriage. It would seem that after endless searching for someone to create a paraffin lamp, that no one would be able to help us.
Instead, the team would have to research and find lamps that suited the carriages period in history and lamps that would replicate the original lanterns without being too dissimilar.
Thankfully, the carriage was already fitted with holes (like port holes in the ceilings) where the lanterns would have normally fitted through the roof of the carriage when it was first made. This made the implementation of our own lanterns much more easy.
And, although the implementation of the carriage’s lights could’ve been done at any time, we, as a team, decided that we would only place the light source inside the carriage once the carriage was stable enough, and weather proof enough. Only recently however, has this been the case for the carriage.
With the fixtures already in place for when the original lanterns were once there, the team began to start work on fitting the actual lanterns.
If you’ll remember from the last blog, the roof has recently been re-set and made out of a completely different material. As this was done, the team decided to fit our own lanterns into the roof of the carriage.
As there were the holes from the roof of the carriage from the original lanterns, it was very easy for the team to be able to fit a set of electronic ‘lanterns’ to the roof of the carriage. What was the slightly more difficult part, was ensuring that the electricity cables were hidden.
As systems engineers, electricity is not something we play with in our day-to-day life. In fact, we try to avoid it as much as physically possible! However, with the help of a professional electrician, the team managed to slowly piece together the lanterns in the carriage.
During the implementation, the team made a good judgement as to how to fit the lanterns. Instead of light switches on the walls of the carriage, clogging up space and making for a not-so-traditional appearance, the team decided to make the lanterns remote controlled!
The coolest part in this, for the team that is, is that you are able to control the lights of the carriage from the house! Pretty cool!
