Success! The wiper contact method is working, and I have the approach road to the fiddle yard almost completed. I have started wiring up the rest of the fiddle yard, but I wanted to test the concept today before I completed all the wiring. No point going too far ahead without testing first.
Here's a short video with proof of it working. Note I need to trim the rails on the other side of the turntable as some of them catch the approach rails. You'll notice the table jam at one point in the video if you pay attention.
As you can see, I got on alright with lining up the turntable manually, so a latching mechanism is not on my priority list at the moment. Before it attends an exhibition I may get some small bolt latches as some of you have suggested, but testing has shown it's not crucial yet - so I won't bother making my own. As I mentioned earlier, I'm not keen on the rod and tube method because it gets very fiddly to solder and use, but a small bolt latch would be OK if I can buy multiple brass "sockets" for it to slot into.
So I'll now show you how I got the fiddle yard to that point!
The first job of the day was to cut up some copper clad sleepers and glue them down on the approach road. I chose to cut them the same size as sleepers because they will be visible from the scenic section. Note also how I re-drilled and screwed where the two trackbeds meet so that I can still access the screws once the rails are down.
Once the glue had dried and the sleepers were firmly in place it was time to carefully solder the rails in right position. This proved tricky because the turntable is slightly too high here, so I had to solder the rails even though they weren't always in contact with the copper clad board. It took a few attempts, but I got there in the end!
Once that crucial joint was done, I soldered the rest of the track to the copper clad sleepers. My soldering isn't neat, and I really should get a soldering station as the tip of my iron is completely clogged. My own fault really!
The final job to do today (once a bit of wiring was completed) was to start on the wiper contacts. Dad allowed me to use some spring steel he had, and I was actually surprised how smoothly it all went together. You can see how the spring steel is curved at the top to stop it snagging on the copper clad boards. As this was mainly for testing, I didn't bother fastening it all down properly.
At this point I was dying to test it, so out came the controller and transformer. Then nothing. Strange, the layout was working last time. I decided to try another transformer just in case it was faulty, and luckily that solved the problem. I guess my older gaugemaster transformer finally gave up the ghost!
As you can see, the Trix track tester showed everything was working well - fantastic!
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