A job I hadn't been looking forward to today, but that of course, is no reason to put it off! It doesn't normally stop me though! Anyway, today I got down to installing the duplicate dontrol panel for the new fiddle yard points at the other end of the layout. Well I say other end, at the moment it is all set up in two halfs, one down one side of the room and the other down the other. This mant it was much easier to test the new panle setup. As alawys, never underestimate how long wiring takes - pretty much a whole day in this case. There were some dificulties due to the fact that I left this job half done a couple of months ago and might have been quicker as I had to work out what on earth I had done the first time. I am certainly not an electronics genius and my soldering is not going to win any prizes but I always get there in the end by trial and lots of errors. So here is where I left it last night;

One very long lead and a socket for each end. Just milling out the fixings for the sockets took ages but am rather proud of one little feature you might just be able to see. On one side I have opened out holes oposite where the screw to baseboard goes to allow the shaft of a screw driver through - simple but very effective.

Today I got down to some serious head aches trying to work out how I had wired the LED's. In the end the best approach was to use test leads to temporarilly make the conections only commiting to solder once that particular bit worked.

So here it is in place after moving the programming track back abit although you can't see it as hidden by the panel. I know it doesn't look much but I certainly worked for it and it will make a big difference in the ease of running the layout particularly if I am by myself. Now what other jobs have I been putting off?