Running in and new fiddle yard

 I bought one of the new Rapid GWR/BR 15XX shunters from Rails of Sheffield. When it arrived it ran but when I set up a circle of track to run it in, it wouldn't go. An exchange of e-mails with Rails and they agreed to take it back. They even sent me a prepaid label. After a week or so, a parcel arrived and I had the loco back in full working order. Hence the next step was to run it in. 

I bought the circle of track from a trader at the Milton Keynes show - at a cost of £40 - because I had hunted high and low for my rolling road but couldn't find it any where. When setting up a drawer unit that my wife gave me to store my railway stuff - lo and behold - there was the rolling road but pushed right to the back of the drawer. I sold the circle of track to Rails in a bunch of stuff that I no longer needed. 

Here is the 15XX on the rolling road being run in. It is a lovely little loco. The Walchaerts valve gear is especially nice. Note the firebox glow.

Secondly, I have built the fiddle yard. This is a two track storage yard fed by a single point.

This sits on my desk and connects to the main board just using Peco rail joiners. At the moment, the power comes in from the joiners. Next plan is to provide a power feed from the DCC bus on the main board.  Here is all the wiring and the point motor. Note that I use Wago connectors throughout the layout.

My next video will cover the unboxing and running in of my new Accurascale GWR/BR Manor 4-6-0 loco. That's going to be a great addition to the fleet.

A new foam core baseboard works

 So, we have torn down the wooden baseboard as it was totally impractical due to the weight of it all. Even with my wife's help, I couldn't manoeuvre it around with any ease. Now it has gone, I bought a pack of black A1 sheets of 5mm foam core. Black is much stronger than the white. This went together really well and I now have all the track relaid and wired up. Unlike the wooden one, where there were issues with point motors, there are no issues with this version so I can get on and build the fiddle yard.

One of the big changes is that I have got rid of the Cobalt Analog motors and some SwitchPilot accessory decoders as there is much more wiring. Now,I have all Cobalt Digital ones which only need two DCC and one frog wire.