Wired for power
I’ve been doing a little bit of wiring today. Nothing amazing, just getting some power into the rails. I’ve been around with insulating joiners, and I think I’ve got them all into the right places now. I’ve also been following up with my continuity tester, basically checking places where I think there should or shouldn’t be continuity. I found a couple of places where the opposite rail was carrying the same charge due to the electrofrog on the previous point being switched. I think I’ve got them all now though.
After working it out, I realised I needed 20 power connections! I’ve found the easiest way to accomplish this is to bare the end of a wire, and bend it to 90 degrees. Once tinned, it can be attached directly to the underside of the end of a rail, OR a metal joiner. A carefully drilled hole below it takes the wire away. The theory being that once ballasted, it’ll be unnoticeable. I did attempt to fix one to the side of the rail (a technique I know is perfectly valid) but in N gauge it’s just not do-able. In OO perhaps, but N is far too fiddly.
So far, I’ve got power into a siding. Woo! My carefully drilled hole wasn’t so careful though, and as a result the track doesn’t fit properly. I’m not worried though, as I’ll just re-drill the holes.
I’ve managed to knock quite a few random holes into the board, and I’ve decided I’ll get around those just using some sort of filler. There’s a couple of bigger holes which a piece of card would be able to bridge. I’m intending on adding a little bit of undulation to the whole base, so I’ll probably do that with a mix of filler and other fun things.
But there’s still another 18 power connections to do yet…