Trackmaking XXVIII

(Back again with today's roman numeral lesson. As an aside, I was looking at some acronyms at work last week and on picking up one sample I just translated it as 'Oh, that's 1950'. That got me odd looks from my workmates).

I managed to get some time out in the shed today, and made some more progress on the wire in tube system. Magikan was on the money this morning and a visit to Jaycars scored me the requisite DPDT micro switches. I also picked up some piano wire on the way home.

The main problem is that I had foolishly set the track down in a few places in order to hold everything together for the shift This bit will be edited out if its ever a journal article). This then had to be undone and carefully lifted to allow me to cut into the foam to lay the curtain rail into it.


The more perceptive of you will be wondering why I didn't lay the curtain rail under the ply baseboard. My main concern against this is that the acting wire coming up through the baseboard would have too much flex to throw the points properly. This is something I've observed with using tortoise switch machines to throw stiff points (which these hand made points can be afflicted with). When everything goes back together it looks like this.


I had to cut the outside plastic layer off to get the tubes under the rails. I've covered the exposed coils with sellotape as my gut feeling is that these are going to leak glue when its ballasting time.

Next time the switches.

(As a final note, I must do something about the height of the layout. It's killing my lower back)