At its last outing at the Farnham Club's exhibition in Aldershot, Freshwater sarted to show its age. Two minor problems developed.

1. The point in the fiddle yard had a blade come detached from the moving tie-bar
2. The central uncoupling magnets started sticking in either the 'up' or 'down' positions.

Fortunately, neither of these problems were too detrimental to the operation of the layout, and were probably not noticed by the viewing public. However, they needed to be fixed before the next outing, the NEC Warley exhibition.

The uncoupling magnets are rare-earth magnets on a beam that is raised and lowered by a servo. This is probably the most used servo on the layout, and runs at full speed between its end stops. I guessed that maybe a plastic gear had a deformed , worn or missing tooth, and the simplest remedy would be to just replace the servo. This was a relatively simple operation with the layout laid on its side. Having removed the troublesome servo, I dismantled it so see what the damage was, but all the gears look to be intact. Never mind, a new servo is installed and appears to be operating correctly.

Here is the new servo in place. Three magnets rise up below three different tracks above the baseboard.

The repair to the point was also quick and easy, but will probably fail again. It is the only point on the layout that has point blades soldered to a moving tie-bar. The points on the scenic part of the layout all use belowbaseboard tiebars, with metal tubes leading up the baseboard surface. These move wires connected to the point blades. The wires are free to rotate in the tubes, so there are no twisting forces on the soldered joints, which cause the failures on the fiddle yard point. Part of one of the below-baseboard tiebars can be seen by the uncoupler servo in the photo above.

Anyway, the point is fixed again for now. Not the prettiest, but I did not get on well with the ealry EasiTrack points from the Association, hence the copper clad sleepers to try to maintain the gauge.