Over the past couple of weeks I had some fairly major works trying to do a 'proper job' of the wiring which I had previously just jury-rigged to allow me to run the first trains around and around. This work included getting the second road of the fiddle-yard working and wiring up the turnouts at either end of the loop. The sharp eyed among you will also notice that I'd made some of the cassette handles too low for a Great Eastern chimney - doh!

The turnouts are operated by MERG 'pocket money kits' servo controllers which just have a 12v input and 3 trim-pots to set the start and end positions of the servo and the speed. I'm operating these from a MERG CBUS board which is located under the mill baseboard which would otherwise have 4 spare outputs on it. It also saves putting another of these board which would only operate two turnout (and thus have 6 spare outputs) under the fiddle-yard. These little boards are very easy to build and cost ~£2.50 to MERG members. Given a servo can be had for around the £2.50 mark these days you have a decent point motor for less  around a fiver.

I also managed to get the lever-frame into position. The idea is that it can slide under the layout for storing. I still need to get some of the levers painted and get a better coat of black on the base of the frame.

Trains have been running and a pickup goods arrived in the yard from Cambridge.

This cleared the line for a Cambridge board passenger service.

I videoed some activity for those who want to see it move.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X92dEDBB1kQ

David