Hmmm, over a month since the last blog entry. Well it is the holiday season.

Progress on the P4 layout continues. To be honest I'd hit a bit of a wall in that I didn't want to get things much further along scenically because I was terrified I would have to take everything apart if I needed to fix anything below the baseboard. I needed to take some time to sort out how to make the gubbins more accessible before I ran too far ahead.

This is where the hindsight comes in and possibly a good entry for the 'don't do it like this' file.

Empire Basin , the P4 roundy-roundy has most of the main line on a viaduct. I'd started the construction in the spare room by fixing a suitably shaped shelf of 16mm MDF to the wall with Spur shelving brackets. The idea was that this would be a solid base for the layout. The 'high level' track on the viaduct was then build on a 6mm MDF base attached to vertical spacer of 16mm MDF to give the correct height. The problem was that none of this was particularly movable so once the point motors and wiring were under the high-level track you couldn't get to it without major works. What I probably should have done is build the whole lot on an open frame so I could tip the entire layout down one side of the room into a vertical position to work on the underneath but there was no way I was going to be able to 'retrofit' that. So I decided all I could do was build the sections as smaller, portable, 'jigsaw' boards which can be removed from the shelf base easily to work on the underside. The big problem with this was that some of the bases for the top section was quite large and difficult shapes to work on, in two cases including 90 degrees of running track.

This has meant over the last month using rather larger tools on the layout that I would have liked to! Having to cut a baseboard in half once you have laid P4 track over it is NOT pleasant. Neither is trying to build end plates for the two resulting sections so that you can maintain alignment. Obviously most of the wiring had to be changed to allow for different routing of the various circuits for the point motors etc. Here I have decided to try and use the MERG CBUS system so that each jigsaw board has the same connections to a central common 'bus' for DCC, control of accessories and power.

Today was the first time trains had run round and round since July and I've rather enjoyed myself!

I'm rather pleased with the way the track looks through the cross over into the yard, and now I can get on with some more scenic work knowing I have a much better chance of fixing things when (and it isn't a case of if) they go wrong.

David