No Time in the Shed This Weekend

Yesterday my son had a school cricket training session in the middle of the day and today my kids former school had its school fete.  As my daughter was dancing there early on with her dance school, and it was a great way to catch up with lots of friends, both ours and our kids, we spent the whole day there.  When I finally got home and down to the shed at about 4:00pm.  For almost 2 hours, I worked at splicing a point into the dual gauge track in Fisherman Islands Yard.  This point will split narrow and standard gauge tracks on the dual gauge track in the yard.  It has now been installed and I had test run (read pushed) both narrow and standard gauge wagons over the point and all seem to work.  I am thinking of adding two check rails as extra insurance to help the various wagons remain on the track as they run through the point, but at slow speed the wagons being pushed already successfully navigate the point.

I think I will be able to work on and complete the narrow gauge tracks in Acacia Ridge Yard next Sunday.  I've got more cricket next Saturday so I think that rules that day out.  I need a left hand narrow gauge point to replace a broken point already in use.  I will hopefully pick up a few lengths of code 83 rail next Saturday at Austral Modelcraft on my way to Saturday's cricket session.  I might be able to dual gauge one of the tracks in the Acacia Ridge narrow gauge yard and even splice it in to the standard gauge return loop track 1.  I've just checked out my Acacia Ridge Mini Panel config and luckily there area two spare push buttons that will allow the point I will splice into Acacia Ridge track 1 to go to the dual gauge track to be controlled.  I just love it when a plan comes together.  But I will have to create a small control panel with two push buttons on it next to my existing Acacia Ridge Control Panel.  This point will be at a location that will not be easily reached thus it will have to be controlled by the mini panel.  However, I will need to acquire an NCE Snap-it to control the point.

We have Tuesday Nighters this week and I think we are heading to Shelton’s place.  It will be interesting to check out what changes he has made to his layout since our last visit and the last few posts on his blog.