Back into building the layout

Time to cut more timber.

The Christmas break of 2 weeks off work and the Australian hot summer and enabled me to get back into the Railroad Room, in between Michelle's job list...

There has been a fair bit of progress made over the last 2 weeks.

First off, lets start with the updated design. A few minor changes here and there. The main addition was changing the Whitehall North switching lead into a branch line / interchange. This will enable a nice long switch lead that does not impact on the main line and will enable a interchange train to be staged out of sight in the staging / helix space.

Here are the updated plans.

Lower staging

The main deck with the new longer switch lead and interchange.

The main deck showing the helix.

The upper deck.

As of today, all the main deck and lower staging is built.
I have laid the south or lower staging tracks and the run up to the main deck.

I have also installed a 2 track drop bridge across the door way and made in place interconnecting tracks that but up to the edge.

Here are the progress pictures.

As part of the start of the track laying, I had the need to crack open a new box of Atlas Code 55 flex. 3 more to go after this box of 50..

Once the main deck was done and the track installed on the main over the bridge, I installed the main deck electronics boards and then added the track power bus, loconet and DC power feeds to them all.

(Please over look the messy Loconet cables for now on the DS54's, there is some clean up works to be done.)

Once the main deck electronics and bus wires were installed, I added the block detection for the drop bridge and the track that leads to the drop bridge. Then ran the first train over the drop bridge..
(May there be many many more!)

Well, that's the progress thus far.
I now need to clean and weather / paint the turnouts I have made before they can be installed and then I will get stuck into the main line through Whitehall and on the Point Henry.

Please check back soon to follow the progress..