Progress is still slow this month (January 2020) but I did have a bit of a breakthrough thanks to some very helpful people in the forum on DCC help. 

This also gave me another issue regarding wiring the BUS wires back to the controller (Roco Z21) although I have to say that following some further discussions on the forum I picked up a few hints on where to go next. One thing this did make clear to me was that the DCC wiring was and is the hardest part of this build for me. Any difficult construction work pales into insignificance compared to the ins and outs of wiring DCC. My solution was to contact Coastal DCC for some professional help which I decided was worth paying for. Unfortunately they do not do the purely wiring diagrams I was after but I received amazing guidance from Kevin at Coastal DCC, so much so that I now feel confident in pushing on. I will certainly be visiting their website for my DCC needs in future.

As far as my wiring goes one thing I've learnt myself is to be comfortable when working, I particularly like to be sitting down when soldering which is not always easy when working along the track but certainly at present thanks to my open frame benchwork this is still possible. I use an Antex XS25 Soldering iron and bought a 0.5mm tip to allow more accurate soldering than the larger bit I had. I did buy some Tabiger lead free solder locally, but found it would not melt consistently and remelting was horrible. Purchased some Weller solder and all is good again. Finally I bought some glue lined heat shrink tubing that shrinks 3:1 which really is much better than the 2:1 I had.

I bought a couple of inline mains cable connectors (actually outdoor use type) and extended my soldering iron and my heat gun leads temporarily to allow better access around the layout. Having done all of the above the task of joining the Bus wires to the droppers is so much easier although I still would not want to do this from under the layout if I had a solid top baseboard, and appreciate most modellers use connectors because of this.

So in pictures, the Bus wires (Red & Black 32/0.2) for the section I'm working on were cut to length and then loosely twisted. With a clamp on each end to maintain the twist these were threaded through the holes in the baseboard cross members under the track bed. 

Using the wire strippers shown I strip back the sleeving from the bus wire by squeezing the handles slowly - if you do this quickly they can cut/break the wire. I then wrapped the dropper wires (16/0.2) around the exposed Bus wire and then soldered the joint.

This is then enclosed with the heat shrink tubing by passing it over the soldered joint and heating with an electric mini heat gun. 

I am connecting every piece of track to the Bus wire independently as you will see. The DCC concepts PowerBase does need drilling in places, especially where the screws for the track go through, but I am sure this will pay dividends when the work is complete with improved running. I am now onto my reverse loop - I'm using a Gaugemaster reverse module and will be wiring this up according to the instructions which are very clear IMHO. I will also be adding my first points, wired for improved DCC running as per "DaveClass47" excellent tutorial on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et3vuedbZ98&list=PLEKjmCmAsAeW4ThbJ6UCMvBzuRvExCCQJ&index=27&t=0s). 

Finally when testing is complete I will be adding a few extra track bed supports and then will be tidying up the wires so that the run along the framework/trackbed using some cable ties and clips. I hope my next blog entry will show a locomotive on track, fingers crossed!