As a brief distraction to the serious business of the Western front I spent an awful lot of yesterday sorting out my neighbours 6x4 Hornbyville layout that he is building for his Grandson - Yeah, right! Anyway, his son (an electrical engineer!), has been going to do it for the last six months but he has now been given up on. Unfortunately, in the meantime, all the track has been stuck down and various buildings and scenery added without the provision of any holes for the point motors. So, what should have been a pretty simple job took most of the day.

Eventually, I came up with a pretty neat solution for the point motor dilemma, which could be of use to people in the future. Firstly, I centered the point blades and drilled down through the hole in the center of the tie bar, through the 6mm MDF top. I then slide a wallpaper scrapper blade under the point to protect it. I then drilled from the other side until I hit the metal. Because of the angled top of the drill, you cannot get a clean hole without pushing right up which could have damaged the point. Solution to this was to get one of the end cutters from my milling machine (6mm is the largest I have), and cleaned around the edge of the hole. Worked a treat - now just repeat another three times. Now fit motors, wire them up, fit the switches and wire them and finally with the track feeds. Crikey, compared to the wiring for my layout this was a doddle. So here we are playing trains;

Just one final foot note to this. Being eternally thankful for my help a couple of bottles of wine were thrust into my hand on leaving. Now little Iz came up with a bit of impeccable logic - if I was doing something I enjoyed, should I not be giving wine to Terry? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm!