Tuesday 25 March 2014

Little mistakes that bother ...

Sometimes it is seemingly little things , wrong decisions, that grate and eventually need to be rectified.
When I first started construction of this layout, I decided, because it wasn't very deep, the points would be operated by push rods, housed in aluminium tubes. That was o.k. and eventually all 18 were
fitted and worked well. I had , however, fitted the piano wires with wooden beads from Spotlight and failed to recess them into the fascia. This wasn't too bad in areas with no traffic other than operation,
but was a damn nuisance where people crossed the room, brushing against them, as it was a major thoroughfare in the house.



The solution to the problem wasn't that difficult: I simply fitted a 25mmx12mm strip of pine
to the top of the fascia, thus protecting the push rods. I also came to the conclusion that the
wooden baubles were quite unnecessary and simply bending the end of the wires into a hook
made the push rods perfectly workable. They even became almost invisible under the strip, yet
were easily found.
At the other end of the system, a little loop attached to the Peco points did the job, painted in
the appropriate rust colour. In the other aisle, where there was only operator traffic, I left things
as they were . I'm happy with the result.