Traction

I spent most of yesterday and some of the day before working away on the layout in the garage and by the close of play yesterday evening I had the bulk of the main line working and wired. The midway loop now has a control panel and controllers for the main line. St Ruth and Port Lucy will use a handheld unit, of which I only own one so it will need to swap between them at first although I daresay a second unit will make life easier in the long run.

The twin controller controls the two sections of the railway up and down of the loop in the picture, this means I can have trains heading towards each other and passing in the loop. It took me a while to work out how to make this happen, wiring wise but I got there in the end. I ended up with the two roads in the loop being switchable to either controller.

The point motors are also wired in as are the ground signals which will be the starters. These are Veissmann units which cost a fortune and have been lurking in my 'big box of stuff for the layout' for ages. They light up and have a mechanical semaphore arm.

During the testing of the track laid this week it became clear that the way I had used the set track made the set of reverse curves virtually un navigable so I removed most of it except the first and sharpest curve and replaced it with flexi. Although this was very tricky to get at to lay I've ended up with much better transition curves and a more realistic and useable bit of railway.

There will now be a short pause in railway building while the domestic authorities are placated, as this sustained bout of garage living has not gone un noticed... Apparently there are more important things than my train set.