Power supply to trakmat layout

First-off, welcome to the forum!

Certainly a nice starter layout you have there!

In terms of where you want to feed the track, my initial recommendation would be to feed it from the LHS of your level crossing about where I've sketched the red arrow below. - You can use one of the 'power clips' I can see in the photo to feed in on the curve. This will allow you to run trains around the outer loop - see some notes below RE other bits.



Some additional notes (apologies if I'm teaching you how to suck eggs on some of these!):

• The type of controller you have is called a 'DC' controller - This effectively applies a controllable voltage to the track which the locomotives then pick up through their wheels. There is another 'DCC' way of controlling things where you can control the locomotive(s) directly, but I'll keep out of that for now.
• The points/turnouts (what is used to switch a train between tracks) only supply power in the direction that they are switched to. This means that if you have the turnout to the RHS of the level crossing set 'straight', the siding on the outside of the loop will not be receiving power. This can be very useful and allow you to swap between controlling different locomotives, but frustrating if you don't know it!
• You have two independent loops of track - This is great for being able to run two trains at the same time, but to do this you will need either two controllers, or a single one that can control two tracks (they will have two 'speed' knobs on them). In the meantime if you want to be able to control everything from the same controller you can use your second 'power clip' and your power track between the two loops at the top where I've sketched in green above. Note however that this must be removed before you connect a second controller if you do that in the future.

Happy modelling! The thing to remember is that we were all novices once, so no question is a stupid one IMHO.

Regards,

Cameron.

Hi Cameron, many thanks for taking the time to explain things to me and advising what I should do. It’s probably me being new to all this model railway adventure but I don’t think I fully understood your instructions. The short straight track that has the power supply which I put on the outer line shown in blue is only temporary as I wasn’t sure where it should go as on the original layout it was as you mentioned to the left of the crossing but when I fitted the Hornsby extension pack E it then had to be moved to allow outer track to sidings. Unfortunately hornby don’t tell you where to put it so that’s why I temporarily placed it there. So do you think I should insert it where the green arrow that you marked?
Also as I only have 1 pair of “link” or power clips I thought they had to me used together to link the 2 tracks.
you can tell I really am a novice but I’m eager to learn but probably will stick with dc for a while and probably just keep the one controller. Maybe in the future I’d go dcc but not until I’ve learnt more. Once I’ve got the power sorted I want to move onto cork underneath the track and then ballasting.
I really appreciate your time in trying to help me out and look forward to your reply.
many thanks,
Simon