Here it is sitting on the dining room table! From this I started to get an idea of the true scale and how everything would fit together. For the most part the track appeared to just about follow the xtrkcad diagram.
The MDF turned out to be a decent baseboard material. Easy to drill, and strong, but soft enough to be able to pin the tracks to. From the picture you can see the to main lines in the center(ish) of the board, the branch line entrance at the top right/front towards the edge of the board, and the yard entrance at the bottom right/front of the board. Note however, the return loop tracks are not yet present - they will be on the far left/back of the board.
The track (Peco set and flexi-track) and was laid using standard Peco track pins. Pins do tend to bend when hammering, so care is needed, and plenty of spare pins are useful as well! To scale the track to the right distance I use a Peco scale tool, available from any good n-gauge stockist. I got mine from e-bay a good while ago. The larger spacing is British gauge, the shorter is European.
A few weeks (months!?) later the wiring commenced. Board one is the most complex board to wire, with power routing to the two boards either side, plus through the cross-over section switches and onto the track. The two adjacent boards require some connections straight from the supply, and some controlled via the switches.
To keep things simple the wires connect through connection blocks. This allows for modification if need be - and I'm sure modification will be needed when the mistakes start to appear! Three switches are crudely mounted on the side of the frame, a partially temporary measure and in time will be enclosed properly. These switches control the power to the cross-over section; (1/4), (2/4) and (3/4).
To keep the wires in place I decided to tension the wires against the board frame. To tension the wires I used connection blocks and ran the wires all the way through in pairs. The screw was tighten up and the wires were then held in place. This turned out to be a fairly expensive mistake!... what I had failed to realise was that the screws had gone straight through both wires in the pair, connecting them together and thus causing a short circuit - in every single wire to every single track!. This inturn seem to fry my HF cleaner unit. When I realised that every track was reporting 0 resistance between each rail I immediately switched off the power. After some investigation with the multimeter I found the problem and had to remove every single tensioner I had put in, and re-insolate the wires. Funnily enough the track worked after that and I managed to run the first loco over the short piece of track that was powered.
Success! Although it was to late for the cleaner unit :(
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