Having lashed myself to the computer today to weather the storm of desperately (and successfully!), trying to finish off my proper work before more comes along, I was able to turn my attention to the points for the new fiddle yard. Having given up on traversers this seems to be the simplest option. Simple - never! Have spent a whole evening on two points to get them up peak performance - and using Peco track was meant to make things simple.

So, firstly, a good clean was in order. These are some old points that have been hanging around for a while and have already been butchered slightly so not too pretty but as they will not be on view I don't mind. Have also made no attempt to hide the wires as I would for one out on the layout.

First mod is to snip off the little lug at A that always gets in the way of the track cleaning block. Next is to remove the spring at B so the blades do not snap closed before the polarity has changed - as I am using Cobalts that are a servo drive the blades are held nicely in position unlike solenoid devices. Moving on to C a bit of nickle silver rod was soldered to electrically connect the two rails, then the inner rails (my terminology lets me down here so the the pic!), are cut at D to insulate them from the frog. I am led to believe that most new Peco points have a handy wire here that you just snip but the 0-16.5 ones have not been updated yet. I used to us a slitting disc in the Dremmel for this but now get out the piecing saw and cut right through the web and rail. I then slide a bit of very thin plasticard in the gap and run a bit of super glue in. When dry I dress it back to give an almost seamless but isolated join.

The next bit is my own invention. I was having problems with the small wheels that most of my stock has falling into the gap at the from which was not helped by the rather over scale rail profile. After some experimentation I have found that sliding a couple of bits of nickle silver strip into the frog at E and then filling the lot with solder works wonders. You do have to carefully file it all down though so that the flange just clears it. I have converted all the new fiddle yard points like this but now have to do the ones already on the layout which is going to be rather interesting.

Almost there now. Power feeds are soldered on at F and on the corresponding rail and a frog feed soldered at G. Finally, turning the point over, power feeds are then soldered to the blades at H

Can you see why it takes a while now?

All is ready to get them onto the new boards tomorrow where another age will be spent connecting all those dangly wires to the Cobalts.