Slow progress (all my progress seems to be slow!!) has been made with the control panel. The mimic diagram is complete, including lettering using Letraset transfers (applied by good friend, sign-writer, Phil Taylor - his work is much neater than I could achieve). The diagram was drawn using coloured permanent marker pens.

Wiring of the lower part of the panel containing the various tag strips and a small circuit board with a couple of relays (extra switches for the diamond crossing polarity and some signal interlocking), diodes to generate half wave rectified supply to the Tortoise point motors and bridge rectifiers to provide nominally 12 v DC to power the relay change-overs and the panel LED's, is almost complete.

A couple of photos show the current state of play.

An overall view of the control panel with the completed mimic diagram. The lever-frame amd track section switches previously shown have been removed from the lower section to facilitate application of the Letraset lettering.

A view of the lower panel compartment showing the wiring - mainly on tag strips. Feeds to the layout are via multi-pin D plugs on the right hand side. Coming in on the left are 16 v AC (power to vitually everything!) and 18 v DC (for AJ uncoupling magnets) feeds and connectors for either DC or DCC controllers and the conection to the DCC power unit. Going off shot at the bottom is the bundle of wires which will conect to the switches and LED's on the panel facia.

The coil of white wires are for the bell code ringer circuit.

Top centre is one of a pair of 3 amp thermal trips in the feeds to the track sections (but not yet conected - hence the coils of blue wire adjacent). I've heard tales of major problems resulting from track short circuits recking controllers, melting loco wheels, etc., especially with DCC giving up to 10 amps, so hopefully these trips will help avoid that.