MERG Arc Flash Generator Kit
This kit was obtained from the members only Kit Locker on the Model Electronic Railway Group website. The circuit emulates the arcing between pick up shoes and supply rail of three or four rail electric locomotives or multiple units. I bought the kit in the hope that it could be repurposed to emulate an arc welder that I was including in a diorama.
I constructed the kit by the instructions, almost! I drilled one of the breaks in the stripboard in the wrong place, but adapted the circuit to suit. Needless to say once I'd finished building the remainder of the kit per the instructions, nothing worked.
Both sides of the completed ciruit board can be seen in the following photo:
I followed all the connections in the circuit diagram and my multimeter told me that all my components seemed to be connected correctly. Since the MERG kits are well tested I don't believe there's a problem with the kit, so all I can assume is that either (a) I made a mistake when tracing the connections or (b) the was a faulty or damaged component. Anyhow, I had an alternative circuit to emulate the arc welder (and that's a whole other tale of woe) so at this point I abandoned this project.
Never mind, at least I've got a CD4093 NAND gate chip I can re-use.