Basic Electrics finished for the fiddle yard

I now have the basic electrics worked out and wired up for the fiddle yard.

The plan was to integrate a programming track into the wiring via a switch.

I use copper tape as my main bus which works very well as you can pick up on it very easily. On the odd occasion (not here but you will see it on the main board) you have to cross one tape over another. For this I use some wide shrink wrap (not shrunk). In the photo below, you can see the underneath of the board.

These strips connect all of the wiring from one end to the other and then to the switch.

OK let's explain what we are doing. I have mounted two phono sockets onto the front edge. One is for the main feed and the other is for the programming track feed. The plan is that the track nearest to the front is to be both a main track and a programming track whilst the others are main track only. Thus, the bus to the left is the bus from the main output of the Digitrax controller whilst the bus to the left carries the output from the slide switch. This switch - see below - controls whether the near track is main or programming. I have cheated a bit with the wiring of the tracks. I HATE wiring up track using droppers. I tend to make a mess of it. Hence, I have wired all these tracks up on the end of the board as follows:

Again you can see the separation between the track that is switched and those that are permanently main track.

Here is the front of the board showing the two phono inputs - man and programming - and the slide switch. The slide switch does have a centre off but that is pretty much redundant.

I have put the slide switch onto a backing of plastic because I knew that my ability to cut into 3/4" wood and get the square hole accurate without machine tools or chisels was going to be nigh on impossible so the plastic covers up all the wavy edges of the wood. Labels are still to be applied.

Next step? Wire up the new track on the main board - maybe tomorrow!