So while that sorts itself out, time to start wiring the double slip. Pretty quickly it became apparent that having somewhere to mount switches might be an idea! Well, I've got some ply - nope, too thick. Dammit, why have you never got some hardboard lying about like it always was (for some unexplained reason) back in the day. Eyes cast round the loft... oh look, the wallpaper pasting table. Reaches for saw...

Above : I feel no guilt. I hate wallpaper.

One control panel.

Controller fitted - started to look like a train set now! With the control panel made, I then decided to mount the controller on it. I don't know why I wasn't going to do that, but I happy I did. The controller is back out at the moment while some umpteen year old white gloss goes off. The plan (ha!) is that the board will be mounted on two cup hooks and a strut to allow it to be folded down out of the way when not being used. It will also be far enough away from Mission Control to avoid playing trains while recording - that way lies madness. And broken things. Expensive broken things. Anyhow... The control panel got given a coat of white gloss (because I had some to hand), and then a second coat (hardboard doesn't take paint all that well) and while these were drying it was back to the track. I finally gave up waiting for the Peco point timbers and decided that I would go ahead and replace the timers where required later. So out came the craft knife to cut away the Templot plan that the points were built on, only where necessary as I half expected everything to explode, but it didn't. So offered it up and cut away the sleepers on the plain line - this is a bit brutal, I had to use drill to cut the webbing under the rails and then use the multi-tool to cut away the chairs then slide them out - the Peco plastic used in their sleepers is remarkably resistant to a craft knife. Putting the points back in place revealed the contacts to the point blades, to stop the blades rising above rail height and to provide electrical connection, were going to be a problem - but then one fell off.

Plan B. With the demise of Maplin, there is nowhere locally to buy copper-clad board, not that they'd be open anyway, so after pondering the possibilities of robbing something from a bit redundant electrical equipment I decided to make something. To one of the removed plain line sleepers I glued some brass off-cuts ('original' Araldite - it takes 14 hrs to go off fully but seems to me to stick better than 'rapid') to solder the point blades to. I was worried the glue wouldn't work with Preco plastic since it feels exactly the same as the mixer/spreader supplied with the glue, but all was good. When it had gone off the new ti-bar was soldered to the blades, making sure with packing the brass made contact with the underside of the running rails. Again I wound myself up into a stew after reading articles etc about switching the point blades together with the crossing vee for electrical conduction, but figured I could add this later if needed. I also got in a stew about bullhead meets flat-bottom rail, but following prototype practice found that soldering the rails works just fine, as does just leaving a gap for electrical isolation of the common crossing - I guess if the track were more curved that might be a problem, but it isn't here so it isn't.

Above Using rail joiners (cut in half so they'd fit) the points are in their final position before fixing. The hole and screw positions for the Peco Twistlock point motor have been made, I don't have a point motor yet. In a timely fashion the point timbers arrived. The two sleepers at the point toe were dealt with as outlined earlier and two nice shiny new full length bearers inserted. I did consider cutting the 'bent' sleeper away, and may well do that before ballasting.

Yes, I did remember to move the plain sleeper on the lower exit road! Apart from the infamous Peco 'bent' sleep this al looks much more prototypical.

Fitting the chairs to the new bearers was a bit of a poser. You can 'click' the chairs, both bullhead and flat-bottom flavours, to rail if you have full access, but the level of applied violence required makes it impossible when in situ. I got round this by cutting the chairs in half and sliding them in, fixing with EMA Models 'Plastic Weld', which works a treat - you get a couple of minutes to shuffle things round and then - bang, it's stuck. Where the joiner got in the way I just filed a bit of the chair away to allow for it (won't work on flat-bottom rail). So there it is, with the possible exception of the bent sleeper (which looks bloody awful).

With the points in place the desk-tidy tippler was pushed around to see what happened. Bearing in mind I made these points about six years ago and never used them I was pleasantly surprised that everything worked well. Using multi-tool I honed a bit more off the rail face where the blades meet the stock rail on one side, more for aesthetics than functionality.

View the full article