Having a Fiddle!

A fiddle yard that is!

The basic frame was built a couple days ago and we made the mistake of screwing and gluing it before we had attached the two angled sides to the layout. This meant that when it came to bolting it to the layout, I could only bolt the two ends because there was not enough room to get the drill in! It seems to be strong enough though, so I'm not overly worried.

The next step was to add a bit of bracing to support the extension (for the travertable), another bit of 8mm ply was simply glued and clamped:

Then it was  time to attach the extension onto the fiddle yard board. Again, as it was already glued and screwed I couldn't get a drill in, so I had to risk it and drill the holes on each bit separately. The first hole was a success, the second not so much! Still, as they are held on by wingnuts, it isn't going anywhere, no matter how rough the hole is...

...which is just as well as I realised I had made a big error! I had not allowed for the depth of the travertable well when attaching the extension. I forgot that I hadn't yet notched the fiddle yard board which is why I didn't even think about it:

So I had to make the holes even bigger and even more untidy than they were before! Still, it holds tight so the sturdiness hasn't been compromised luckily. The photo below shows the current state of affairs, with the ply tops precariously balanced in place (awaiting internal bracing).

And so the end of the day rapidly approached, and I decided to print out the control panel onto two A4 sheets of paper. The printer has decided it no longer wants to print blue, so the colours are wrong.

But fear not as I have (what I hope) is a good idea. Basically I have access to a large number of tools and I looked at the printout and thought "You know what, this would be perfect for routering out". So that is what I am going to try!

It's gonna be fiddly and very time consuming, but I'm going to try and route out all the space around the trackplan (i.e. recess it about 2mm), thus leaving it stood proud. I can then paint the trackbed sections in the appropriate colour. That black border will also be raised to give a nice edge to it.

I really hope it will work in practice as I can see it in my head. Hopefully I can start on this tomorrow.