Andy R. A.
Member
The layout was 2 -3 years in the planning stage, it took about seven more years to get it (almost) finished.
The Fiddle Yards were made first, wired and fully tested using all new track and points. Each track section has at least two pairs of track feeds in case of a possible loose wire. The backscene boards are all removeable, being fitted with flatpack furniture brackets so they just slot into place. The front scenery has been engineered with strategic lift out sections so you can remove them and lean on the bare baseboard if you need to. Fortunately, apart from one or two minor derailments the careful tracklaying and testing at the beginning has proved to be well worth the effort.
To avoid having to work under the lowest part of the loft roof I made the Fiddle Yard boards at the front of the layout, being able to turn them over to do the initial wiring into poly block terminals for final wiring. The completed boards were 'rolled' into place for fixing, just leaving some small sections of track with sliding rail joiners to connect the lines. Point motors can be accessed from underneath if needed. So far no problems.
This shows some of the backscene support brackets. The Peco point motors at this end of the Yards are more easily accessed as the boards are narrower at the loft hatch end, and are fixed into the points as the points can be removed more easily from above.
