It goes like that doesn't it? You do very little for a goodly while and then, all of a sudden, you do lots of things often in a very short timeframe. In these instances I reach for my Latin Dictionary and exclaim "Carp Dime!"; or something like that...
Anyway board No.1 is sort of moving along under its own momentum, so back to board No.2 and get the trackwork sorted. I've been cleaning the soldered elements of trackwork using a copper brush mounted in a mini-drill. This was suggested to me by Bob Jones at a recent NEAG meeting, and it has really helped clean the track and reduce the excess solder thereon.
At the same time I've been preparing the Tortoise Point Motors for fitting. Suitable holes were drilled in the baseboard so that the actuating wire could reach the switch. Several unsuitable holes were also drilled, but I'll refrain from telling you too much about those!
The motors have eight PCB type contacts on the bottom; two for the power to drive the motor and six contacts for a DPDT switch. As I'm using DCC, I reckon I'll only need one double throw switch to alternate the polarity on the crossover of each point. To avoid having to solder the motors into the baseboard, I've fitted each with some screw terminals wired onto the PCB. Each unit can then be screwed physically into position and wired using the screw terminals:
By having a couple of spares available, any failure can quickly be remedied without a soldering iron. That's the plan anyway!
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