#departureboards — Public Fediverse posts

I love Solari boards – the clickety-clackety electro-mechanical split-flap displays that were used as departure boards in railway stations before they were replaced by electronic versions ☺️

It would be fun to have an old one, but I suspect they’re extremely hard to come by – I’ve certainly never seen them popping up on eBay!

So I was pleasantly surprised to discover that a US company, Oat Foundry, makes character-by-character split-flap displays to order (not quite the same, but still fun): https://www.oatfoundry.com/split-flap/

Very cool, but how much are they? Well, let’s just say you can *rent* their smallest one (3 rows of 16 characters) for a *week* for as little as $7400 😱

That makes their competitor’s Vestaboard (6 rows of 22 characters) a complete steal at £3095 – to own outright no less (!): https://uk.vestaboard.com/products/vestaboard

The basic principle of split-flap displays is well explained in this three-and-a-half-minute video – you can see why they don’t come cheap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAQJJAQSg_g

For people with the right equipment (3D printers, soldering kit etc.) and corresponding skills, there are lots of DIY instructions for making split-flap displays – way beyond my level sadly!

📷 Departure board at Edinburgh Waverley 1989, by Graeme Phillips, graeme9022 on Flickr

#Solari #SplitFlap #railways #DepartureBoards #displays #electromechanical