Looking at the photos from today, it's surprising how little I've done considering I've spent 6 hours solid on the layout! I didn't get the wiring done today, but I did connect all the pieces of copper clad board together to each rail of the table. It's nowhere near as neat as others have done, but it's good enough for me!
I think most of the day was spent continuing to fettle the turntable and surrounding ply to make sure it was as level as possible. I ended up making the locating holes on the underside of the table a bit deeper to make it sit flush, as well as sanding some of the softwood battens for the same reason. For some reason one of the blocks that the lazy susan sits on was a bit too low so that was quickly solved by adding a scrap of card underneath to bring it to the right height.
Back to the rails briefly, I also glued the copper clad boards in the fiddle yard and soldered the loco stabling lines in place. This also turned out to be a pain in the proverbial! This N gauge track actually has a larger rail depth because it is embedded into the sleepers - making it both too high and also fiddly to remove the sleepers. Another job for the Dremel then! The rail profile was cut down (in some places a bit too much but I was extremely careful to get the rail heights the same as the table when it came to soldering). Note how I used a peg (and a heavy weight for the far tracks) to hold the track in place whilst soldering.
Eventually all three tracks were soldered and tested against every turntable road to check they were correctly aligned.
As the sun set, I finished off for the day by reexamining the scenic entrance/exit. I realised that I needed to put another rail join here between the two ply trackbeds. I also had some trouble because the wooden block (under the track, left hand one) was uneven. Given that this caused the main layout trackbed to sink a bit, I cut out another block to place to the right of the existing block thus keeping the two trackbeds at the correct height. This also means I can actually screw the scenic section trackbed down properly.
Whew. So, tomorrows job is to lay some copper clad sleepers on both sides of this join, solder the track to it, and then cut the gap. This means that the whole fiddle yard top can be removed to access wiring in the future without tearing up any track! Looks like I'm going to have to put a new screw hole in the photo above though because it currently sits underneath the track.
Anyway, after that I can finish wiring up the fiddle yard, add the contact wipers under the turntable, and maybe even test it.
I wasn't really expecting to write that much on this post, so sorry about that waffle!
I think most of the day was spent continuing to fettle the turntable and surrounding ply to make sure it was as level as possible. I ended up making the locating holes on the underside of the table a bit deeper to make it sit flush, as well as sanding some of the softwood battens for the same reason. For some reason one of the blocks that the lazy susan sits on was a bit too low so that was quickly solved by adding a scrap of card underneath to bring it to the right height.
Back to the rails briefly, I also glued the copper clad boards in the fiddle yard and soldered the loco stabling lines in place. This also turned out to be a pain in the proverbial! This N gauge track actually has a larger rail depth because it is embedded into the sleepers - making it both too high and also fiddly to remove the sleepers. Another job for the Dremel then! The rail profile was cut down (in some places a bit too much but I was extremely careful to get the rail heights the same as the table when it came to soldering). Note how I used a peg (and a heavy weight for the far tracks) to hold the track in place whilst soldering.
Eventually all three tracks were soldered and tested against every turntable road to check they were correctly aligned.
As the sun set, I finished off for the day by reexamining the scenic entrance/exit. I realised that I needed to put another rail join here between the two ply trackbeds. I also had some trouble because the wooden block (under the track, left hand one) was uneven. Given that this caused the main layout trackbed to sink a bit, I cut out another block to place to the right of the existing block thus keeping the two trackbeds at the correct height. This also means I can actually screw the scenic section trackbed down properly.
Whew. So, tomorrows job is to lay some copper clad sleepers on both sides of this join, solder the track to it, and then cut the gap. This means that the whole fiddle yard top can be removed to access wiring in the future without tearing up any track! Looks like I'm going to have to put a new screw hole in the photo above though because it currently sits underneath the track.
Anyway, after that I can finish wiring up the fiddle yard, add the contact wipers under the turntable, and maybe even test it.
I wasn't really expecting to write that much on this post, so sorry about that waffle!
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