Send in the navvies

Having spent ages messing about with points, point motors, uncouplers etc it is finally time to move on to the fun bit.  So yesterday morning, after a hearty breakfast, the V.I. Lenin Red Flag Workers Progressive Shock Construction Brigade swung into action with the aim of going from bare baseboard to running layout in a single day.

First step was to work out where the holes for the point motors and uncouplers needed to be.  I assembled the point formations 'dry', carefully aligned everything on the baseboard, marked out the point positions with a pencil, then stuck headless pins through the actuating holes in the tiebars to provide a marker.  I also marked the position for the electromagnets. Having lifted the track again I drilled holes in all the appropriate places, gave the baseboard a final light sanding and got the glue out.

My intention was to use PVA glue alone, with heavy weights and drawing pins to hold the track down until the glue dried.  However, having laid the point formation at the station throat, I realised I had got one of the points in the wrong place, and at this point I found that unsticking glued-down track is all too easy, at least with the glue I was using.  So I started again, this time using a mixture of PVA glue and track pins.  Once the track is ballasted I should be able to remove the pins which are a bit obtrusive to my eyes.

Tracklaying progressed reasonably smoothly, apart from the diamond crossing which needed two short sections of track to be cut to a very precise length.  Needless to say I screwed this up and had to have a second go at it.  Measure once, cut twice... By lunchtime I had all the track laid.  Incidentally, when using Code 55 track you need to fit dummy sleepers at the joins.  I found the easiest way to do this was to use a spot of Superglue to attach them to the underside of the fishplates before positioning the track sections.  I also found that Peco insulated fishplates are too thick for the dummy sleepers to fit underneath them, so I will have to cut up some sleepers and glue them between the rails to fill the gaps where I have used insulated fishplates.

Next stage was to fit my modified point motors.  A couple of them needed the baseboard holes opening out slightly (measure once, cut twice) and I ran into serious trouble at the station throat where there are two points next to each other.  It hadn't occurred to me that by putting the operating pin in the centre of the tiebar I would not have space to fit motors to both points.  I lashed up an extension using a Peco remote point motor base, a bit of steel wire, a brass tube and some Araldite, and that was that problem solved.

By now it was teatime, and after several fortifying vodkas the Shock Construction Brigade started on point motor wiring.  At some point I will need to build a control panel but for now I needed something simpler.  The answer was to attached a screw terminal block (or 'choccy block' as they are generally known) to the outside edge of the baseboard, run all the point motor wires to it and then use a probe poked into the terminal block to operate the points.  I wired the crossover points at the terminus end as a pair, also the points controlling the bay platform and engine shed road.  My box of bits yielded a Gaugemaster capacitor discharge unit, I connected up an old Triang controller to provide the power, and all but one of the points worked.  The rogue motor was binding on the hole in the baseboard even though I had already had a go at fettling it (measure once, cut three times) and with this problem sorted I now had fully working points.

6.30pm, and after taking the dogs for their evening walk I set about the really tedious job of soldering wire droppers to the rail sections ready to connect everything up. I needed to put in about forty of these, and the task was not made easier by using solder that was much too large in diameter.  Also my eyes were starting to get tired.  So in the end I didn't get any trains running.  I connected up the first few droppers, tested the track with the multimeter, found I had somehow created a short circuit across the rails, and gave up.  Wiring can wait until the next session.  

A few pictures:

Overall view, station throat is on the left.  Clive the greyhound is unimpressed.

The classic branch line terminus - run round loop, bay platform with access to engine shed, coal siding near right, general goods far right and cattle dock at the far end.  The only unusual feature is the short diamond crossing, allowing two decent length goods sidings in a small space.  I can't remember where I saw that, but I like it.

Metro-Cammell DMU waits where the platform would be, if there was one.  This is a refugee from a previous layout - a very old Farish product with the hopeless motor bogie replaced with a Kato chassis. A bit out of period for Belstone, but it gives some idea of the overall scale of the layout.