Following initial function testing of the control panel, I have connected up the panel and two boards to check a bit more, including the yard controller connection points. To my consternation, feeds to the second board (the one with the coal drops) and the DC input were completely dead. Everything on the first (station) board appeared to be reasonably OK (see later) and the DCC input and local point operation/LED's on the second board worked. A slight sense of panic set in as I frantically checked various tag connectiones and continuity. Then, with a massive feeling of relief and realising what a silly mistake I'd made, I noticed that I had only connected one set of jumper cables between the two boards - the other was still neatly held in its clips! Phew!! I sheepishly connected the second jumper and heaved a sigh of relief as everything on board 2 now worked.

Well, actually, I found that a slight re-thinking of the wiring to the Tortoise point motors was required. I had followed one of the wiring suggestions from Tortoise and used a switched half-wave rectified feed to one side of the motors and one side of the 16 v AC supply to the other. The siding point and associated LED's on the second board worked OK, if a bit slow, but the platform release cross-over, involving two motors and three LED's would only work in one direction. I found that with the LED's removed from the circuit, the motors worked perfectly, so the LED array must be causing too big a voltage drop. I could solve this for the local controlled points by swapping the switches to have an extra pole but the panel mounted switches for he two other cross-overs already were the maximum number of poles available. Mmmm... Then I decided to try wiring the LED's in parallel with the motor feeds instead of in series. I attached jumper leads to try it and thankfully it worked, so it was then a case of rearranging the wiring and connecting on side of the LED arrays, via a resistor, direct to the 16 v AC side which the motors are connected. All now appears to work as intended.

Next step is to start work on wiring the last scenic board - the one with most of the station throat point-work - that I've been putting off. No more excuses, so I'll just have to knuckle down and make a start.