Hi,

We've had a good week of progress on the layout, with some work at the weekend (while attending our club meet) and a few nights this week. The extra effort put in by the group has allowed us to meet our first milestone and have the track laid by the end of Feb (even if we did need that extra day as it's a leap year).

As usual I've included some pictures of the layout below:

A Freightliner 66 with 16 HHAs sitting on the Up Line (taken at the club meeting).

Looking at the layout from right to left from the viewing side, nothing done here, module was being used to align track.

Centre module, track laid to module break for on-scene sidings, link between on-scene and off-scene sidings added, points installed with above board motors (unforutnately the track plan evolved to fit the boards which were already made, so these points ended up being positioned over the leg supports and will be hidden by an embankment creating the break between on-scene and off-scene) and track laid to both module breaks for the off-scene sidings.

Track laid to complete the 3 on-scene sidings which are positioned alongside the main running lines.

Finally a view in the opposite direction (left to right) of the centre board from the viewing side.

We are now going to concentrate on wiring the underside of the layout. Each section of track has been fitted with droppers (every piece of track and on longer sections every 30cm) connected to terminal block under the baseboards. The plan is to have 4 power ditricts, Up (with Up Siding), Down (with Down Siding), Sidings (On and Off Scene) and a dedicated bus for Accessory Decoders (Point motors, Signal Operation, Block Detection etc.). By separating the layout into power districts, if we have a short on the layout it will only affect whichever power district the short occured in and the other districts will remain operational with trains running.

Cheers, Mark.