Before the race rail can be fitted, the central shaft and its bearings need to be installed. (As I will be using the MU6 motor drive, they will stay in place afterwards, whereas the optional stepping motor set up does not need the lower bearing.)

I then soldered a brass bush onto the upper bearing plate (the one with countersunk screw holes) and attached it to the center of the lower board using countersunk screws, washers and nuts.

Next, the transverse beam was attached below the lower plate using spacers and bolts/nuts/washers. The lower bearing plate was then prepared with its brass bush and bolted to the transverse beam. Some fine tuning of the soldered bushes was necessary to get good alignment. “Next time” I would solder the two bushes in place with the shaft installed, as in loco frame bushes. Once I was happy with the alignment I coated the steel shaft with lithium grease and slowly rotated the shaft in the bearings with my power drill. This resulted in a tight but smooth fit.

The upper bearing at the center of the well - again, note the countersunk screws:

The next steps were time consuming and hard on my finger joints. I decided to follow JeffP's* procedure to file down the heads of the brass pins to a more prototypical size. Each brass nail was placed in the chuck of my Dremel and filed down to a reasonable size. I needed 160 of them but actually did all 200!

The white metal chairs also needed fettling and had to be opened up in order to thread on the race rails (which come in two semi-circular pre-formed bullhead rails). Again, a lengthy procedure that left my finger joints a little stiff. I also opened out the fixing holes with a 0.8mm drill. The kit contained exactly the right number of chairs (40 keyed left, 40 keyed right) so it was important not to lose or damage any of them.

I also blackened the brass pins, using an acid dip followed by brass black (both sold by C&L).

By this time I was ready to start installing the race rail and this will be the subject of the next post.

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* JeffP is a fellow RMWebber who also has a place in France and is also building a turntable - in his case the 70ft version. We have been running in parallel in other threads, including photos of French railways. Thanks Jeff, for trailblazing your kit construction techniques on line. Every bit helps (and I hope this thread will help others in the future).