I Think I Made My First Point Very Well

This week I had not been to the shed until late this morning.  While I was planning to try and check the scratch built points electrically before I installed then in the layout, I was too lazy to wire them up.  So I bit the bullet and installed one of the dual gauge points in the northern lead into Acacia Ridge Yard.  I trimmed the rails so it matched the size of the point I was replacing and basically it slipped right into the space provided.  I installed a double pole double throw electrical switch in the baseboard to actuate the point by an omega spring made from a paper clip.  I used the switch to control the polarity to the frog of the dual gauge point.  After installation I turned the layout power on and there were no shorts.  I ran my 45 class, an AR Kits loco that I installed a decoder in about 10 years ago numbered 4519 which was sitting in the standard gauge siding where this dual gauge point connects to.  The loco was driven out of the standard gauge siding and it ran well out onto the mainline.  I then switched the point via the electrical switch and omega spring and the 45 class ran well back through on the mainline.  I then ran the 45 class back the other way and then back into the siding and the standard gauge trains have never run so smoothly through this set of points.  Next test was a 1720 12mm class loco.  1741 was then run through the point backwards and forwards and it ran well through the point as well.  I then took my new wheat wagons for a run, hauled by the 1720 class loco.  They also ran through the point pretty well.  I could not have hoped for a better result.

I decided to push my luck and started removing the other point I was to replace with a new scratch built dual gauge point into Rocklea Sidings for the standard gauge trains.  That was easy and I then cut the dual gauge point for this location to the correct size and installed it.  The standard gauge entry into the Rocklea Sidings seemed to work pretty well.  I then made another omega spring from another paperclip and connected that up to the original point motor.  I then pushed some 12mm wagons that were sitting in Rocklea Sidings through the mainline trackage of the new point and they also seemed to work.  So it seems that the trains pushed through this set of points seem to work quite well.  But I ran out of time to fire up the DCC system and see if there was any shorts with the new point and if powered locos will travel through the points.  I think I will now leave that task until Friday this week. 

All in all a positive result for the few hours I spent in the shed today.