Well,

I am out of the arm chair and now armed.... with a soldering iron .

As the double slip is the busiest and hardest peace of track to build I thought I would make a practice one, so when I stuffed it up I would learn what I needed to fix before building the new one.

I printed out the double slip section from Templot and then glued it down to a melamine board ( as they are water and glue proof-ish. So I can use it over and over again... yay )

I then cut up the sleepers for the skip using C&L copper clad. isolation was done with a dremmel cutter and a very light touch. Then each sleeper was checked for continuity over the gap. ( I hate having to fault find once its painted )

I then set to work with my trusty brass roller gauges from dcc concepts and some c&l bullhead.

And eventually I ended up with the picture bellow ( Excuse the shadow)

Unfortunately with testing 4 wheel wagons, thanks to the angle of the track intersection and the fact that it is indeed to curved tracks crossing, Every 20th time I ran a wagon through the centre it would magically change tracks. ......ARRRGGH

However looking at the gauging of the rest of the track I thought I would experiment. Now the centre crossing switches as well.

This one shows the crossings thrown

This one shows them neutral to show that they move.

Yay problems eliminated . Also the running is that good that Im not going to bother making another and just use this one instead. Only down side is that it uses four cobalts to throw ( yes I am aware it can be done with two cobalts and some cranks and levers, however Im lazy and would rather do other modelling ) However a scissors crossing also uses 4 and this is the space saving version of that so no big loss.

Also found this in the super market. (its a kiwi fruit, if anyone is uncertain) gave me a laugh.

On another front I have rip cut using a friends table saw a whole heap of 4*8 12 mm mdf panels into 100mm planks to start making open structure boards.

However no photo of that. I mean who wants a photo of wood ......

See you all later.