Switcheroo

A re-design is underway on our fiddle yard which involves some minor surgery.

You may recall that the yard is at the back of the layout and the lines from either end enter at different heights.

For the first few exhibitions we had it divided exactly 50/50 with one half higher than the other.

The problem was the roads were not long enough to hold a full-sized WHR train of 10 carriages plus a Garratt. 

Himself's solution is to resconstruct the middle board so it still has two levels, but instead of being split along the width the fault line will run the length of the board with the lower level lines in front and the upper ones behind.

This will give us an extra 76 cm - or 2ft 6in in old money - about 3 coach lengths.

Putting this in practice meant cutting out half of the low and high levels and swapping them around, hoping they would match in size and fit.

And the good news is they did!

The fascia still has to be added in front of the high section, then it will have to repainted before the track can be re-laid.

Now that the track layout has been finalised - we hope -  Himself is going to built in powered points with automatic route setting.

This involves the deployment of much brain power, a shedload of diodes and cat's cradle of wiring.