Track laying... at last

Today the first trains ran falteringly over the new bridge, faltering because the rail is rather dirty but none the  less they ran.

Lucy rumbles onto the bridge

Finally happy with the seaweed and so on I decided to bite the bullet and lay the tack on the joining board with the bridge in it. I have previously epoxied copper clad paxolin sleepers either side of the joins so I cut 2 lengths of track to the right size to protrude onto the fixed boards. The wiring of this small board is slightly complicated by the fact that the station limit of shunt is on the right hand side of the bridge so I had to remember to use insulated fishplates. Once the track was pinned down and soldered to the paxolin I used a slitting disk in the trusty Dremmel to cut the rails to make the section removable again. 

Next job was to pin down the track to the right hand, I have decided to use the new PECO setrack under here as it is very hard to get at because of the limited height available under the baseboard above. Once that was done I soldered three sets of supply wires, two sets on the bridge section and one on the 'mainland'. They will be controlled from different controllers in the long run but for now I bunched them together for test purposes. All went well and Ena and Lucy made the first few passes.

Rather blurry phone pic but you get the general idea

This evening I finished the main painting of the new Chivers Innisfail coach, all it needs is some glazing, people and the roof fitting. Oh yes, and vac pipes and fleet numbers. Nice kit, might need to make another one.