Illavearf finally gets some attention

Saturday arvo was spent watching the AFL GF (go The Cats!) so no shed-time that afternoon. Late Sunday morning though found me in the shed contemplating which layout to work on, Beaver Springs or Illavearf. The latter was chosen. I spent the time wiring in the second MRC decoder to the bus and Point 5 to the second DS64, whilst 'supervising' the boys in the yard. I was surprised at my soldering skills on this occasion as it all went like clockwork! Fortunately the boys behaved themselves and spent more time in the shed looking at what I was doing than running around like blue-arsed flies in the yard. With Point 5 wired in, the Kensington Hill side is now completed. I tested the mimic board and some weird things were happening. Time for lunch!

After a post lunch nap, I ventured again into the shed on my lonesome to do some troubleshooting. The mimic board issue was a result of two issues. I hadn't programmed the mini-panel for Point 5's inputs (thought I had done this when I had done Point 4!) and the feedback LED power leads were reversed. Both easily fixed. While I had the controller connected into the mini-panel, I did some reprogramming of Point 4's commands as well, as both Point 4 and Point 5 need to be interlocked else derailments would occur. As for the feedback signal, a simple wire reversal was needed at the point mini-switch block.

As no children had yet come out to divert my attention elsewhere, I took the opportunity to fix the footpath fencing for the station in place. I then tried various locations for the red telephone booth and settled on one close to the road, station car park and the end of the footpath fencing. I scrapped away the grass and positioned it in place. I then found one of my street lights, drilled a 3mm hole close to the telephone booth and positioned it in place. Yet to glue both in though as I will give it a day or so and see if it still looks OK.

So finally some movement on Illavearf's modelling!