We solder on..

I thought this board was designed to be a simple addition, with three people soldering all evening I think we may be getting closer to finishing the first pass at wiring the layout.

With confidence the tag strips were connected to 25 way D connectors to provide the umbilical between the boards, and to everyone’s surprise we managed to wire them correctly first go, alternatively we both made the same mistakes, whatever it worked.

Then under expert guidance we next connected up some of the floating point motors and power connections.

Also since last week some homework’s been done and the new control box is unveiled. This week’s homework: “To complete the schematic for the control box lid”.

Stop press: Finally we understand that the brewery, hotel and mission complex are in progress! Who was making the scaffolding….

Simultaneous soldering world record attempt

A simple evening of soldering for all, well almost all, some chose to look at pictures of piers “whatever floats your boat” or station in our case.


The auxiliary point motor switches were used to enhance the power delivery to the frogs. Those Peco points are little devils, history tells us once you’ve stuck, ballasted and painted them they stop working. The problem is those little tags just get gummed up, more on this later.

Power drops were also fed back and connected to tag strips ready for creating an umbilical join cable to connect the boards together.

Anyone seen the flux?

Stratton we have Separation

Mysteriously since last week someone appears to have moved the rails. I’m sure that these gaps weren’t there when we glued the track down! No problems we break the solder between the rail and the screws and gently slide the rail to a better position and finally solder it back down again.

Well that was the plan the only problem was instead of “gently slide” I meant get four blokes with pliers and heave it into place, “Perhaps we overdid the glue a bit last time….”

With that issue solved we break the baseboard away for the first time. Then flipping it on is side we set to work on installing those little seep turnout motors.



A technical point to remember: Always align the point work such that the motors will be exactly where the baseboard strengtheners are! As this make the installation and future maintenance much more challenging!