This morning I'm on cooker cleaning duty and while I'm waiting for the Mr Muscle look-a-like to do its stuff I reckon there's time to post another update. Progress is happening on two fronts. First up the home made point actuation units have started to be installed. The first tranche of four are fixed into position along with the surrounding track. Still to appear are the associated microswitches as I'm awaiting a delivery of small self tappers to fix them down.
Hopefully you'll just be able to make out the three brass pins which trap the outer static brass sleeve; these pins are soldered to the sleeve. To allow for mounting the microswitces I've extended the roadbed with blocks of 2x1 topped with offcuts of mdf.
The wiring has been tidied away too. All connections bar one are made by wires soldered to the underside of the fishplates. These wires are then fed through a black plastic straw which penetrates the mdf trackbase, the void underneath and the osb baseboard top.
A second front has been opened up aimed at completing rolling stock projects which have spent some time on the to do pile and which were in danger of stagnating. Not pictured as it escaped the camera is a Cambrian kit of an LMS steel van, largely complete but unpainted, constructed originally to EM standards for Morfa. It now has OO wheelsets, small Bachmann tension lock couplings and a part finished paint job. Also on the workbench a Slaters NER wooden hopper. This was kindly gifted to me, but was in need of attention as some of the joints weren't that well formed. Bits were prised off, tidied up and stuck back. Loose, dangling bits were stuck back. Gaps and ejector pin marks have been treated to some filling and filing. Hornby wheels and Bachmann tension locks completed the constructional phase and like the van it's now in the paint shop.
Unfortunately it rides a little high, partly because the Hornby wheels are half a mil too big but mainly because the axlebox/spring assemblies are not seated as snugly as they might be. In the past this would niggle but I've decided that for the moment I can live with this as it's not particularly apparent at layout distances and it is a layout wagon rather than one for a glass case.