Most of the sleepers and timbers have now been laid, as have cross-baseboard PCB strips at the fiddle yard end of the layout.

I almost had enough PCB strips for the point timbers, but the one turnout in the fiddle yard had to be a bit of a bodge. A few of the timbers elsewhere are formed of several offcuts, but no one will notice once everything is finished.  I am running out of sleepers too, so some less-important bits of track will have to wait until I place another order with 2FS Shop One.

The gaps every so often in the photo are where the point blades will go. The turnouts I am trying to represent are flatbottomed rail with slide chairs under the point blades but no chairs elsewhere. Timbers for the slide chairs should be slightly recessed to maintain the rail height - like this photo below - though the track illustrated is much too modern - I couldn't quickly find a really good photo of older track to illustrate the point (pun!).

I am planning to use 2mm Scale Association etched slide chairs. How to represent the recessed timbers presents a problem though. I can't find any thinner PCB than 2FS sleeper thickness, other than very thin stuff, around half the thickness I need. I may have to cut the required timbers out of sheet metal instead. We shall see.

In the meantime, I can at least lay rails on the plain track. Getting rails laid either side of the baseboard joint is the main priority. Then, I can separate the baseboards again and work on each board on its own.