What is Grain Belt Models? While not “officially” launching for another couple weeks, here’s a sneak peak at a new line of N- and HO-scale models.

How does this fit with Iowa Scaled Engineering’s traditionally all-electronic product line? 3D printing. We have been using 3D printing to make faceplates and brackets for our other products (including the ProtoThrottle) for some time now. Almost by accident one day, after experimenting with some special filaments, we realized we could make some very realistic items that, for a change, go on top the model railroad! Thus was born our line of culvert pipes and (coming soon) corrugated steel grain bins.  
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Nelson Moyer recently completed a very nice gondola load using some of our HO-scale Grain Belt Models culvert pipes.

Nelson’s description of the work:

“The CB&Q GM-4 gondola is a Walthers P2K 52 ft. mill gondola kit. I added the reinforcing strap on the top of the sill per CB&Q practice, painted the car with Tru Color CB&Q Freight Car Red, and used decals from Jerry Hamsmith. The Culverts are from Iowa Scaled Engineering. The cribbing is Northeastern Lumber Co. strip wood, and the tie-downs are 1/32 in. wide ChartPak vinyl tape. [The load is] not removable because the cribbing is too fragile. I would just stack the culverts, and wrap the tape around them if I intended for them to be removable. I used canopy glue to spot glue the culverts and spacers and CA for the wood and tape ends.” 
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This week I’d like to introduce you to two new Qwiic-compatible I2C products in our lineup:  a new Qwiic-compatible, 2 channel analog to digital converter, and a re-spin of our popular I2C-RELAY16 into a Qwiic-compatible 3.3V version. 

To explore how each of these can be used through a simple example, I’ll walk through an example connecting the ADC to a liquid level sensor, using Python on a Raspberry Pi to read the data, and then act on that liquid level by triggering a relay. 

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