I'll bet that those of you following the story so far are all thinking the same thing - what happened to the shunting plank?

Was I right? Oh well, I'll tell you anyway

After spending about a year propped up in the corner of the dining room gathering dust, I decided that I really should finish the wiring. Also, as we'd decided to go DCC on my friends' layout and all my locos had been converted, it made sense to wire it with that it mind so I pottered about buying some bits and pieces such as isolating fish plates and copper tape. It was only this week though, spurred on by the arrival of my Gaugemaster Prodigy Advance² and the fact that I'm off work sick, that I actually did anything significant.

So, a few hours soldering some extra power feed wires to the tracks and tidying up the underneath resulted in this:

I powered up the Prodigy and my very first DCC loco ran on my own layout moments later. Briefly anyway. After I'd cleaned the track though things improved significantly, and one of my class 20's has now explored all corners of the layout. There are a couple of soldered joints that aren't as good as they could be and there's a bit of an issue with the three way point in the middle of the layout, but on the whole I'm very pleased.

The three way point is a bit of a nuisance really. It serves its' purpose in terms of saving space, but I'm going to have to read the instructions again to work out how to wire it up properly. Although luckily, longer locos like the 20 seem to trundle across quite easily - it's only really my 08 that struggles at the moment

Anyway, next I've got to decide whether to bother fitting point motors or not. It was the original intention (along with fiddle yards either end) but now that I'm about to embark on the larger layout I'm not sure if I can spare the energy. I might just use it as a test bed for ballasting and other ground treatments.