Getting Something Moving 2 - Trackwork and Wiring

Easter Sunday dawned bright and sunny, and once the formality of the egg hunt was over I opened up the workshop and set-to tracklaying on the new micro layout. The first step was to draw out the curves and point positions from my full-size plan onto the board. Having it painted an even colour all over aided this somewhat.

I know a lot of people lay track quite quickly, but I prefer a steady approach in order to get a smooth permanent way. I started with the two points at the front of the layout, getting these in place with the linkages to their relevant slide switches and pre-wired rail joiners took most of the morning. After lunch the rest of the circuit was laid, using Peco "crazy track" with the rails pre-bent in my home-made rail bender (three screws in a piece of wood). I had also made up some styrene templates, tracksetta style, to aid laying the curves smoothly. After a couple of setbacks, including having to remove and replace one piece of rail, and also a lot of adjustment in the top-right corner, this was the state of play at the end of the day, with the front siding only placed in position.

With only the afternoon available on Easter Monday I completed the track laying to my satisfaction, using a few oddments to produce the hidden siding. Unfortunately I wasn't able to complete the wiring that afternoon, despite having created a control panel in advance.

I had initially wanted to use the pre-wired control panel from 'Upcycle' but realised that had only three switches, and ideally I required four. Having made a new one to fit above the board at the top left corner I realised that the arrangement from 'Shifting Sands' with everything concealed under the right hand end towards the back would work best, so I spent the next few evenings reworking the parts and creating a support structure under the board edge, giving the area a coat of black paint to save fiddly work later on in the project.

As can just be seen in the picture above I also added mounting points for chocolate block connectors at appropriate points as I didn't trust the board to hold screws firmly. There are six connectors in total, three of which are behind the control panel to aid easy removal of components if required. 

Finally, a week on from Easter, all the wires were connected up, looking reasonably tidy but in need of a couple more clips once testing is satisfactorily completed. A shortage of enough colours of wire was resolved by rescuing a few lengths from a self-isolated stock, maintaining social distancing at all times!  

With the track cleaned, I tested it with a circuit tester and finding no issues trusty no.3 was used to test the track. 'Pandora' observes, and did in fact have a trial run around the circuit, completing it in one direction, but looking incredibly incongruous on 5" and 6" curves!

To mark the occasion I also took a couple of minutes of video, you can see that even no.3 swings out a bit on the curves, some shorter O9 locos may be required, along with consideration of using Greenwich couplings rather than MicroTrains...

The next steps will be to formulate the plans for theme, stock and scenic treatment. That might seem an odd way of doing things but I wanted to take advantage of the time available to get something up and running. So if I don't go straight on to the next stages, don't worry!

Colin