I wasn't able to get anything done today thanks to a headache induced sleepness night. I did however pop into town for a couple hours and picked up the rest of the track to finish off the layout, and also made a trip to Maplins to get some connectors. In the end I got a variety of them to try out, from D sub connectors to DIN connectors. I know the D subs will be hard to solder, but I would like to try them anyway otherwise I would have to buy about 3 DINs per 1 D sub!
In an effort to reduce the amount of connectors needed (and also to simplify the whole process a bit), I came up with an idea. I had this idea in my head for ages but wasn't sure about it in practice. The idea is to mount the control panel as a removable entity onto the movable stack of drawers that I take to exhibitions:
As can be seen by the photos, it means I can operate the layout from wherever I choose. Yes, this means the fiddle yard won't be able to be used if you're operating from the front but I have an idea for that too. Basically I would use the 3 workshop sidings (upper level) as the fiddle yard when operation from the front. I have also bought some magnets for uncoupling and some Greenwich couplers for the 3D printed wagons.
The sketch below shows my intention. Note the cup holder between the two controllers (and away from the electrics!). A must for exhibitions I find. Thankfully, I won't need to permanently attach the control panel onto the unit as I can simply slot it on top, using the four corner posts that already exist on the unit to stop the whole thing from sliding off.
So enough waffle. Whilst it may not be physical progress today, I'm really glad I had a while to step back and think about the siting of the control panel. Oh, by the way, the wiring will all be routed to the centre board for ease of connecting up the control panel to the layout.
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