It's not often I look a gift horse in the mouth, so when SWMBO suggested that I fill a gap at the Mansfield Show by manning a demo stand demonstrating the various techniques used to build a layout I thought

A whole two days nag free modelling!

and jumped at the chance

So, armed with newly constructed baseboard with cork trackbed and reversed plan glued to the underside, point, plain track and tools etc I set up my tables.

First job was the DCC power bus, done with way over the top 6mm twin and earth blue and brown wires screwed to 30A terminal blocks at each end of the underside.

The track was then superglued down after first threading the dropper wires through the pre-prepared holes. Insulation was stripped back on the bus wires and the droppers soldered on. This proved tricky as my 30W iron struggled to get enough heat into the 6mm wires, but I got there in the end.

AT this point I connected the track up to my trusty H&M Clipper and put the pug on the track. In full view of the adoring public nothing happened - a dead short somewhere

Steve1 leant me a multimeter and after a bit of random sleeper gapping with the minidrill I sussed it. Where the plain tracks come tgether at the heel of the point the sleepers interlace (I nudged them in Templot to allow this). When I fitted the track some of the paint must have scraped off one of the sleepers that goes under both rails leading to the frog causing the short. A quick go with the slitting wheel and all was well.

After lunch on Saturday I broke out the ballast bought from Benhams the previous evening. I chose Woodland Scenics coarse buff and a mid brown medium grade. I took all afternoon to ballast quite a large section and was pleasantly surprised that despite my careful mixing of the two once I had finished brushing it around I got a nice uneven affect. Kinda looks like the brown was original and the buff is recent repair work.

Sunday was reserved for soldering up a yard of track for the first cassette. I was a bit tight and only sleepered every other one on the templot plan, so the result looks like it should be Gn32 track if there is such a thing

Anyway, a VERY enjoyable weekend with much chatting and maybe a little modelling B)