Well, the board is complete and I have finished the wiring so far - all of the DCC bus is in place plus all of the points are connected to ESU Switch Pilot accessory decoder boxes.
Here is the underneath showing the wiring before I fitted the point connections.
You can see the square supporting boxes and the attendant legs . Each box is fitted around the specific leg. You can see the area around the base of each leg. These were designed as flexible boxes that can be adjusted to get the height right for each leg position. Once they are right, I run hot glue around the tops and fix them in place.
As you can see, there are lots of little connectors. I have a wide range of these from a simple two channel through up to a 5 way single channel. Here is a three channel.
From there, I have fitted three ESU Switch Pilots to control the points. The Switch Pilots output three wires - a common and a left and right. However the Kato Unitrack points require two wires so some conversion has to take place. I use DCC Concepts DCD-SDC6 which make the conversions.
I have had a few problems from the testing. In trying to sort out one point where I had missed getting into the rail joiner I managed to break a rail away so that £30 for a new point. Then I had some trouble sorting out the double crossover. I set it up on the ECoS controller along with two points to make a single crossover but every time I tried either one, the two way would work. I haven't really sorted this out and it is looking like the four way crossover (which is a single Unitrack unit that costs £50!) has failed but we have some way to go to get to the bottom of it. Also, in my usual stupidity, I opened up a point to see what was inside and it all sprang apart. I thought that I had sorted it but it turns out that I hadn't so that is another point that I have had to buy. It gets better because when the new point arrived, it was faulty. Not only does it not work through the ECoS but also doesn't work manually. Tony at N Scale American Trains rapidly agreed to put a new one in the post without waiting for me to return the faulty one. That is good service!
All of these issues will be easy to correct once the replacement arrives so I have set the railway up in its chosen place.
It turned out that I hadn't got the legs long enough so, currently, I have put some foam core sheets underneath each pair to get the top level. I have also built the staging extension which is detachable from the main layout. This is a box with legs to get it level. Here is a shot of the staging.
You can now see the two storage points for the connecting tracks. I have ordered some barrel plugs and sockets. Needless to say, I have to buy 10 when I only need a couple. One of these will be used to move power from the main layout to the staging. The other will be involved in powering an Arduino based light detector on the staging that will control a color light signal on the route off the main board. That's for the future though.
I am awaiting the replacement point and then, maybe, I can run some trains.
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