Cleanliness before...

After seeing photos of people's hobby rooms and work areas something has occured to me... I need to clean up the garage! :P

New Latches

Hooray! The new latches are a success and hold things in place nicely. And I've sussed out how to 'join' the rails together as well. A part from that I got nowt else done. Roll on next weekend...

Rewiring

This weekend proved successful, I managed to rewire and relay part of the track so the wiring and power distribution is correct across all boards. The isolators have been removed from track 1 and 2 on the main board increasing the scope of the crossover section an allowing the station section to be isolated completely.

I also took the opportunity to change the station slightly, by relaying the far station lane and bringing it in a little, making the station section symmetrical. I had been bugging me for a while that I had made the station platform in that section far to wide for the scale. Now it is in line with the other side, plus I have more scenery space.

Finally I have come to the decision that I cannot avoid the rail joining issue any longer. It will not work the way I thought I'd try, as trying to line up 6 tracks (and thus 12 rails) is virtually impossible. Unfortunately, fixing this will probably involve relaying part of the track in the station and yard, but I think a step backwards will probably end up with two steps forward!

On the up side my local cash and carry has some good latches to replace the temporary ones currently fitted to the board. And I found some copper tape to experiment with! :)

Busy busy...

I have taken a slight break from my modelling due to being incredibly busy, and having a bad back... I'd like to find the person who has the voodoo doll of me and keeps stabbing me in the back!

However, I'm hoping to get on with fixing the wiring on the station board [1] (the main control board) this weekend, and expanding the control of the yard board [2] as well as piping the power onto board 5. If I just get the power on board 1 fixed I'll be happy. I came to realise when testing the tracks that I had made two major mistakes on board 1.

Firstly the 'cross over' set up with controller 4 and one of the main lines was in fact reversed, causing a short when the loco crossed the insulators. Not sure how I managed that, but it's easy to fix by swapping the two supply wires underneath the board.

Secondly, when the points are set to move the loco from the mainline siding to the yard there is no power on one rail. Doh! To solve this I have decided to rearrange the power in the station and extend the scope of controller 4 by removing some of the isolators. This unwittingly solves another problem - it means I can use the switches that change power from the line controllers (1-3, mainlines and branch) to controller 4 as power isolators for the entire station.

During my break I have also been and bought myself a woodlandscenics incline set for the branch line. I have come to the decision that a height change would look far more effective for the layout than it being totally flat. I may incline the main line on the other side if this works. We'll see.

The Present Day!

All posts that appear before this post (Probably all 'October' posts) are historical posts - they are posts writen to catch up to the present day! :)