With the near completion of the track on my first module, my thoughts have turned to just how I'm going to operate the points. I have had some ideas of a system I like to have. The aim is to have a setup that replicates the north and south signal boxes, at its most extreme with a prototypical lever frame. As there is some interest from the photo-taking peanut gallery in being able to take pictures from both sides, and also to be able to operate from both sides, whatever system chosen will have to be flexible. This will probably rule out a manual 'wire-in-tube' system (but its a remote possibility). Likewise anything involving nylon or string, as I've quite honestly thought of his sort of system as slightly 'hinky'. this moves us onto point machines. Solenoids are out to, as they just are not reliable enough, and can be very hard on points. The Tortoise would be ideal, but costs an arm and a leg, and given that I'll need 30 odd machines I won't get much change out of a kidney or 2. Another option is to come up with and build my own switch machines, which would require me to acquire some engineering skills, and it would have to be cheap. A common solution to the problem is to use micro RC servos with an electronic device driver. As long as these are properly set up they run fine. The last option is one I have discussed earlier, memory wire. This is a real unknown, though I have had some feedback on it from an overseas forum here.

I'll kick this around a bit over the next week or so, but time is ticking away....