One of the lock-down jobs has been to tidy the wiring on Dury's Gap here. I'm in a bit of a mess with layouts - the house is small and railways however compact, are bulky things and I've spent the last week trying to shift things around to make space for yet another one. I think I'd almost be happy for someone to buy absolutely everything except the toolbox so I could start with a blank page. Anyway...
One of the things that got noticed while moving DG was the loose wiring. To be honest the whole layout is scrapbox: regulars will know that the board is the old Morton Stanley carcass which as you can see was made from scraps of MDF from old layouts, s/h screws and timber from skips. Even on this second layout the wiring is tat: redundant layout wire, speaker cable and even odd bits of mains wire make the whole thing go.
I fired up my Woolies mini glue gun, twisted the cable sets together and blobbed most of them flat onto the underside of the board. The only things dangling now are the main feed in to the 12v and the link to the FY. The usual thing now is to use a bit of plug chocky strip to clip this to one of the corner blocks, tidy for moving, but with a layout-build looming and a limited amount of this in stock (who knows where I'll be able to get anymore soon) I just looped this around things. Not super tidy, but at least not all dangling now.
Hi Chris
ReplyDeleteSpace issues are a problem. I have a small storage unit on a local business park and just managed to get my modelling stuff out of there before lockdown. Sadly I didn't get the current baseboard for a micro or my stocks of timber out in time. The reason they were in there temporarily? Well the story ain't worth repeating.
Anyway the new shed for storage, freeing up the converted garage for model railways was due to be delivered and installed last Tuesday. The day after Mr Johnson closed everything. I lost the race against time. The garage (now Gary as it has a proper floor and has been plastered and painted) is a tip.
The only saving grace is I'd just bought two pairs of Ikea Lack coffee tables (inspired by the sheep themed layout guy)and have joined one pair together as a 6' by 16" baseboard. The only additional materials to the tops and the legs (used as bracing, though their internal integrity is pants) are two lengths of 5mm ply which provide support in the vertical plane. It is ugly but effective. And I can store the layout vertically and put it up on my Stanley saw horses for the build and operation. In the kitchen. ;-).
I figure I've got six months to complete this. Cushty.