Progress has been a bit slow due to the weather being too good to lock myself away in the train room but I've finally made a start on some track laying.

So far I've laid Phase I of the track which covers the West end of the hidden storage roads. It's taken a little while to sort out a few gremlins on the wiring for a couple of the points but, bearing in mind that the 7 points for this section have a total of 420 connections of various types with some being soldered and others screw type, I suppose that was to be expected. I daren't show you the wiring underneath the board now.

First step was to cover the boards with 3mm cork stuck down with Copydex. I then pinned the track template to the cork and marked the outline of the trackwork. Next was the Plastazote track bed which comes in 2m x 1m sheets so this was loosely pinned down before the track template was laid on top and the track outline marked out. The Plastazote was then cut to shape and glued down to the cork, again with Copydex. The reason I use both cork and Plastazote is so that I don't form an acoustic bridge between the track and the plywood baseboard tops when the track is ballasted as forming the trackbed shoulder invariably results in some ballast being outside the Plastazote track bed.

Here's a picture with the cork and Plastazote track bed in place.



And now with the track template laid on top and the storage road points positioned ready to start track laying.



Here's a close-up of the points pinned into position with Pinboard pins and dropper wires commenced.



A few hours work saw the points all installed and wired up and the first half of the storage road tracks installed. The sharp eyed among you will have also spotted that I've painted the 'sea' at Parmouth Harbour but it will need several coats of goss varnish to finish it off.




Here's a closer shot of the track laid to date and you will also see that the first loco has been running on the layout - purely in the interest of testing the track you understand.



Here's a close-up of my little Peco Collett with a drawing pin for size comparison. I suppose this must count as the first loco to run on the layout so that's another milestone reached.





That's it for this update. Next will be the East end of the storage roads which has 9 points in it so that's another 540 connections to make.

Which idiot said DCC only needs 2 wires.