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Before you lay the felt, have a read of this thread. Buy yourself a staple gun and some stainless steel stapes. Seriously, don't try and do this will a hammer and nails. Hard to see form the photos how much bracing you have under those boards. The big loop boards at each end will droop if you haven't got a good support structure under them.

That is looking good.

Thanks Archie. The unpowered car is fairly simple then. I should have specified wiring diagrams for both powered and unpowered cars. I'll try to open up my own at some point and take a picture of the PCB if that helps. For DCC you have a common positive (blue) and switched negatives head (white) and tail (yellow) which is reversed at the other end. Somehow that common positive has to go to both sides but the opposite to the switched negative that is on?

Hi guys, at last all the boards are up and painted. All I have to do now is apply the felt to cover boards. I was very tempted to put a circle of track out and run a train. The sun went in and I could feel it getting cooler. I am glad I have finish the paining of the undersides of the boards. Trying to move about under the boards and paint. I have never know so may joints and limbs give me cramps all at the same time. One of the joys of getting senile. I need another good day weather wise so I can cover all in felt. As the weather our way looks very mixed for next few days. Then it will be hammer up finger end pinning the track down. I will be keeping it very simple this year tosort out what its like running outdoors.

After a frustrating morning failing to get an Arduino to respond to DCC commands I switched to track remodelling for the afternoon. Emble Junction had two turnouts removed and replaced by a single slip. Trains can no longer snake through the three turnouts on the outer line which was always lovely to see. But the track layout is far more attractive.

Nice to hear from you again Thomas and good to see the additional progress you have made. I have to admit once again that, seeing what you've achieved so far, it all looks well beyond my own capabilities and if you'd seen my attempts at constructing just a short river section you would understand why. You're obviously a little behind schedule with everything that's been happening over the past couple of years but have you any idea when you might be reaching completion?

Having a look online I can't seem to find an image of the dummy car with the body off. But in its simplest form, the wiring for the lights would look like this. if the lights are controlled buy the decoder my best guess would be that the connection to the locomotive would end up going to the pcb and then to the decoder. If they are dumb then the connection to the locomotive would most likley just go to the pickups. Not having one nor anything similar I couldn't tell you exactly how it works but this would be my best guess.

My Bachmann Cl150 has a 2-pin connection on the drawbar for both head and tail lights on the dummy car. Do any of the electrical engineers on here have an idea how that is done? I'm guessing that it is a series of diodes so that the polarity reverses depending on the direction. But can anyone work out the wiring diagram for it in the powered and dummy cars please? Seconds question, if I was going to do night/day headlights, interior lighting and central locking lighting on one decoder plus bringing the track pickups from the dummy car back, would I be able to save on interconnection pins in any way using these techniques?

I use them, they work well.

Hello together! I wanted to give you a sign of life from me again. At the moment I'm finishing the wiring of the layout with the 10 boosters. I've also reached the last level indoors. With kind regards Thomas

I've done very little additional work on the 'river' beneath the girder bridges as the weather hasn't really been that suitable (and I'm not keen on strong breezes) but I have been busy with some other jobs. Believe it or not I had completely forgotten that my 37114 had already been fitted with a sound decoder until I 'tested it' a few days ago. I hadn't even recorded the fact in my loco database. It's got a Jamie Goodman 37/0 soundfile but with a small square speaker beneath the fan grill which does it very little justice at all. So I'm currently part way through adding a Rail Exclusive 'Chunky Boom Box' speaker in the fuel tanks as I've found that's what works best for me. It does mean I have to remove the ability to manually switch the tail lamps but that's not a problem with how I operate. I have also purchased some additional speakers to upgrade some of my other loco's and have been going through them to determine which are suitable and would benefit the most. It'll be something I do over the coming weeks because I would like to get some of the cleaner ones weathered as I go along, especially while they are already dismantled. If all goes well then I'll have 37114 back in action soon.

I agree with all the comments above. I was planning on paper and in my little mine all sorts of this and that. But now the building of the boards is making a slow start with poor weather. I have come to realise that having multiple lines with stock on them is wonderful to watch. I would think a real headache if the weather suddenly changes trying to get ones stock back into the dry. Like most I enjoy watching the trains go by and passing each other as I did in my youth sat on an embankment outside Rugeley Trent Valley station on the West coast mail line. So for me simple is now better and allows me to relive my youth again.

When you've got it working, how much for 5? 😂

I've been thinking about how to connect a servo to a point, outdoors. I still have a roll of PTFE tube from the car door lock motor installs and some stainless steel wire to go in it. What I've twigged on to is that the tube only has to be fixed in place firmly to work. The route it takes in between is irrelevant. This should enable me to place a servo under the baseboard and run the tube around the edge and on to the top. I've designed a small tube terminator mount and my mate has 3D printed it for me. The test board works fine with the turnout moving gently from closed to thrown and back. I've also developed a way of driving the servo from the DCC accessory commands. I won't go into details. I static tested it yesterday and it worked. I need to do some more field testing to check that it can still understand the DCC signals down the end of 10 meters of wire with trains generating electrical noise in the track bus.

I was thinking, that the difference between most indoor and most outdoor (by no means all though). Most indoor and exhibition layouts I can think of need interest, so people model a station, a depot, sidings or a junction - somewhere there is some operation. Outdoors, gives more opportunity to model the bits in between. Extended stretches of line with no interruptions, just letting a train get on with doing what a train does. The other thing I was thinking about on the back of Mick's comment in Ken's topic was staring me right in the face. I was looking at my Dad's Bachmann calendar with a picture of a Northern 153 and 158 coming into Kirkby Stephen (I guess thats on the Settle line) past a semaphore signal and the signal box. You could almost take that contemporary train out of there, put a BR blue loco with blue grey Mk1 or 2s and it would not look a bit out of place. You could probably put a BR Steam loco on there and it wouldn't look wrong. T get to a point, maybe the simpler things are, the more flexible they are in terms of time period or stock that can be used.

No, there's just the boundary fence beyond so the bridges are permanently fixed.

I enjoy taking the photos just as much as I enjoy running the trains so it's nice to have a subject that's close to home! I keep trying different techniques to get sharp, in focus images and that particular one, staged as it is, comprises 12 individual photos blended together, with the focus point being increased with each shot. Fortunately the camera can do that automatically and it just leaves me needing to put the images together using software on the PC. I'm not really sure why I go to so much trouble because my phone camera does a pretty good job without all that messing around. It's pretty shallow yes, but that's not a problem even if it dries out. My pond is a matter of feet away so there's a handy source of water if and when it's needed. It's only going to need water in when it's being filmed/photographed and that's really the main reason for doing it.

Thanks guys for all your nice comments. With the weather here been a bit off and me working on the two boards. I took the manger director to a local garden centre for a few plants and a meal. Keeps the peace as well as finds me more work to plant the plants. Hopefully will do more outside tomorrow. Will keep you all posted.

I thought that bridge was removeable so you could get through to a gate?

Lovely picture of the 'Tip Top' (class 26). It's pictures like that one that inspire people. The water feature looks to be of to a good start, but my immediate thought is, if it's that shallow will it not just evaporate really quickly? Perhaps it is deeper than it looks? I'm just thinking of my bird baths and how quickly the water disappears on hot days, and it's not just the birds. It's something I've been pondering (pun intended) myself for a while as I'm thinking of putting some guttering down one side of the track in one section and claiming it as a canal. Maybe I will have to experiment myself...

It's something I've been meaning to do for quite some time and I've finally made a start but I'm beginning to wish I hadn't. I've always liked the idea of having a bit of water beneath the girder bridges, nothing too grand and certainly not a small pond of any kind, just some standing water. The trouble is my creative flair diminished a long time ago and I'm having difficulty working out what to do with it now. I daren't start chopping away at the central support footings to open it all out so it will just have to be very shallow directly beneath the bridges. I thought about using the angle grinder to cut a channel either side but then decided against so it will have to stay like that. I've got some rubber pond liner that came from a pond we made some years ago which was later filled in so I'll be using that in an attempt to contain some water to the rear of the bridges and to a lesser extent in front once I work ouut how to do it so that it looks okay. I've spent most of the time pondering the situation (procrastinating I think is how Chris refers to it) while doing nothing so don't expect this to be completed anytime soon. I'll add this photo of 26024 with a few oil tanks crossing Low Shott viaduct because it's one I haven't yet added.

Some good progress there and good that you have neighbours that will help. You'll soon be at track laying I'm sure. On Mick's point, I think the great thing about garden railways is they don't need to be set at a specific period and that seems far easier to do than on an indoor.

Great to see you've been able to make a start Ken and the boards look nice and solid. Getting started is enough to spur you on to making further progress. I didn't respond to the above from your initial post but there's certainly nothing wrong with running exactly what you want to run - it's what I do too. My attic layout is simply 2 ovals, all very low-tech, but allows full length trains which was my main objective. Garden layout is one loop with no real limitation on train length but exactly what I set out to achieve. There's no need for anything too techical in order to enjoy it.

Well at last I have started on the baseboards. I have completed the two straight boards, just have to cover with roofing felt. I am fortunate that a neighbour is going to give me a hand as far as raising them off the ground, about 2 feet high. I just got the two loops at each end to sort out. So still a lot to do before anything runs.