The illusion of progress is what I should have called my last blog entry, quite a while ago. Summer in any case is a time when I temporarily abandon modelling for the outdoors as my allotment and specifically my plant breeding (Hemerocallis or daylilies) takes over. But in autumn there is a nice period when I only need 3-4 hours a week of gardening time and so it’s back to the loft.

What time I did have was spent sorting out the snags with what I had just laid. I did foresee some troubles, and the major one was that some locos couldn’t negotiate the tight curves and indeed reverse curves associated with the station entrance. After a lot of testing I had to admit defeat and decided I would have to rip up all the station approach trackwork and re-lay it. The problem was how I would do it without sacrificing platform length, as I decided to use a labyrinth of Setrack points to gain the distance associated with the 22.5 degree turn compared with only 12 degrees for Peco points. In some situations the more gradual angles work well but in this particular space, not. I was also concerned that I was going to lose loco parking sidings but as I redesigned the whole area I realised I could fit in one headshunt accessible from all lines and it can be a full trains' length.

So all in all I had to relocate 12 point motors and a lot of track. I already had the points I needed in stock but they will be missing for later parts of the project and will have to be replaced; the Setrack points will never be used and finish up being sold, modified as they are.

I think the new layout looks quite good in the end, and I only lost 5cm off two of the platform tracks, while gaining more on two others. The length is critical to having and 5 coaches minimum per track, with the loco uncoupled at the buffer end and eventually another loco coupling up at the other without fouling the points, as there are no reliefs anywhere with the 1-2-1 track configuration. But better still, the more temperamental locos navigated every combination of point setting without problems. There were one or two hesitations at very low speeds. The worst snag I had to deal with was a dodgy soldered connection to a point right in the middle of the labyrinth, but fortunately I was able to reach enough of the joint from above to get an extra dab of solder onto the dropper joint, and bingo. So while I say no progress, in fact I have passed the point I was at in May as every piece of track and every turnout configuration have had 2 locos through them at least twice. I will be running full trains tomorrow but in terms of snags I have always found with steam era locos they always run better, in terms of track holding, when they are pulling a train.

A few details about track laying. I have used a very thin, 2mm closed cell foam underlay of a building quality, just under the track. Each piece now has just a single, low tack glue dot attached so they don’t wander, with track pins keeping the sections in place once added. Where there are slight variations in level from one board to the next, I catered for it by inserting an extra layer of foam on the low side. On the old DC layout I used 6mm foam and while it had fantastic cushioning more than required, it was a pain to work with. I’m very happy with the new material, while it doesn’t raise the track quite to prototype height, it’s quite close, and it will be easy to use for superelevation should I decide to do it on the long curves, and decision time for that is coming up.

All my points are the so-called insulated frog. The Setrack were anyway, and my small stock of streamline was also, not a conscious decision on my part. However there is now a lot of material on the subject of live frog points on RM web and personally I couldn’t see any advantage. I have painted some of the guard rails a metallic colour, it’s not right and I will have to redo them, but this seemed a simple solution and overall I have avoided adding frog juicers or something similar. Although the layout is large and that brings complexity I don’t intend to bring anything that is unnecessary!!!! For a bit of amusement (of the reader, not me) I have included a photo of the under-board wiring. I am in an intermediate phase where I am running direct DCC power but at some point I’m going to install detectors - current sensing type. In order to do this I will have to re-route all the power cables on one side of the power bus into the CS modules. I didn’t do it right from the start as I was worried it would be hard to troubleshoot with the detectors in place and passing current but not in use, but everything under the boards is connected using Waygo 5-way connectors in daisy chains and I will be able to reroute them to the CS modules with just a few extra cable sections. Looks like a mess but I think it’s quite effective. I haven’t had any problems at all with cables and connectors, only with a few dry soldered dropper joints, dating from when my soldering iron wasn’t getting hot enough.

I have also adopted a different approach to wiring the accessories. In order to reduce the difficult wiring while lying underneath the layout, I prewired the decoders out to connecting blocks with larger terminals. The DR4018 accessory decoders have tricky connectors and as the outputs arent protected, one wire in the wrong place and thats an output blown. The wiring loom is what can be seen to the right of the photo.

Anyway, I have reached a good place now and I will carry on with track related activities while the loft stays warm enough; that's usually up until Christmas and then it depends on the weather. I have planned that in January I will build all the elevated sections, which can be done on the dining room table with occasional forays to the garage for painting and cutting.