One week to the Granite City Train Show. There hadn't been much progress over the past few weeks. The Winter Road Rally season had been in full swing and the wife and I had been competing and organizing around Minnesota and Wisconsin. Highlight of which had been sliding into a snow bank on a forest track that when I got out to push turned out be a three food deep ditch full of snow!

But I digress...

Today I was lucky enough to be able to devote the whole day to working on the layout. The important thing was to wire up the fiddle yard and get the layout running. Which was achieved without too much difficulty. Then, as per usual I got carried away creating a whole boxed up self contained system.

This first picture shows the boxed up state. The fiddle yard tray sits ontop of the roof which when inverted and placed at the end of the layout forms the base of the fiddle yard.

The lid comes off, the front protection door unscrews, opens and then screws to the fiddle yard base. An operation that only takes a couple of moments. then you wire up the layout pop some stock on the track and away you go. Total time setting up the layout? Five minutes maybe.

LED lighting will be added and the bare wood will get a coat of paint tomorrow