Dawson Creek in 009: track wired and testing...

So it didn't take as long as I feared, just a few hours with a soldering iron, some wire and a drill and Dawson Creek came to life this weekend...

The track is very simply wired up as normal DC operation. There are four isolating sections, switched with toggles (yet to be incorporated into a simple panel). These are dock siding, engine shed siding, front of loop and creek siding. The layout is very simple to operate, manual points, DC control, isolating switches - so much so that my 4 year old spent a happy hour playing trains! One of the big reasons the layout was built in the first place!

This means you can have three different trains on the layout at once! So Alex and I had to test this out... what this meant was getting out some of the stock for my old unfinished Bejsu Reka project... which made me realise that with careful finishing the layout could actually be flexible, in that it could be a Yukon gold mining line OR it could be a North European forestry line (Norway or Sweden perhaps?).

The Porter looked at home pulling the European coaches, as did the Jung and the O&K. Extensive testing has shown all these short wheel base Minitrains powere locomotives run through the sharp corners ok. The points work, although a few may need some fine adjustment to the tips of the blades to improve running I think, just because of where I've put them in the track plan, and we've found some engines run better in one direction (i.e. which side faces the inner (tighter) side of the track) than the other!

The light through the dining room window shows the Jung and Davenport in an unlikely scene - however both very much work horses for a micro layout like this! Next up (after making a small control panel) will be painting the track and then making a start on the scenery - or these activities in parallel! More soon...