East Works: tearing my hair out...

If there is one thing I dislike more than woodwork in layout construction, it is wiring! I was determined that East Works would be more electrically advance than Creech Bottom (which just had two isolating switches and a track feed)...

Creech Bottom met its end this week where all the trees and structures were rescued for re-use and the baseboard junked, one last shot here with the new layout in the background.

That meant the new home of East Works could be tried for size, here it is above my workbench, which will mean I need to add a few wall supports, but it fits and fits well.

Tracklaying is quite good fun, and I enjoy forming neat track work and curves, and my daughter helped with the cutting and pinning whilst things dried - I tend to work with superglue to secure the track as I don't like the pin heads, and it dries quickly - the ballast will do the hard work shortly, so it only needs to be secure during testing. Track feeds were added, along with isolating sections, all working well. However, I've added Peco PL10E point motors and switched frog polarity PL13 switches, which complicated matters somewhat. All wired up after some head scratching the CDU I'd bought on eBay was rubbish - infact connected directly to my 16V transformer all the points switched much more cleanly. However we managed to melt one of the tie-bars on the point when cutting down the pins on the PL10Es, I think it will be ok as I re-formed if before it set! The PL13s I'm sure 'work' but they must be very sensitive to setup as I don't think they all work properly - so I might be relying on point blades as well! Oh well. Wired up and tested it all seems to work ok - and the two locos (Russell and Stanley) worked nicely, and fitted in the headshunt.

At the moment the 16V and track feed is from my Gaugemaster D controller, I may look to replace the track control with a Gaugemaster W.

Now my least favourite parts are done I can move onto basic scenery, before sealing it, painting the track, ballasting and then adding the back scene. More soon...