Part Two: The Next Step...

...Was to actually do a bit of model rail building after four years of planning and preparation. 

In that four years I've read umpteen articles and web posts and been to many shows, and in that time I've learnt there's no such thing as an expert in model railways on the internet (there are some who write for magazines and who own model-related businesses) but there are none who post to forums and answer problems; they witter on as if they're experts which, in my opinion, is dangerous. Anyway, more about that in a later post...

The first thing I did was lay the track out without pinning it down. Before I went any further I had to include the two Inspection Pits (free download from Scalescenes- I used them as a trial to see what their stuff was like; really good, so good I bought the Lock and Canal Boat as I'm going to have two locks and a basin on the layout). This involved borrowing the father-in-law's jigsaw to cut the recess into the baseboard (which, incidentally, I did at 10.30pm, so I don't know what the neighbour thought when he put the dog to bed). I'd also bought the Black Cat Technology lighting kits designed for the pits (£12.50 a set from eBay): it's been about 20 years since I soldered in GCSE Electronics and DT, so it was a bit fiddly but I plugged it in... and it worked first time.

One of the Scalescenes Inspection Pits in situ- I'd already weathered the track.

I was surprised it worked, so I thought I'd give an engine a run. I'd fitted a decoder to one of my engines a while ago, but wasn't sure it'd work. So I got the controller out of its box (Hornby Select) and wired it up to the track, put the engine on... and that worked too. In fact, it ran around most of the layout (I'm using insul-frog points, so it obviously only ran where current could reach).
You will see from the above photo I laid cork underlay (1/16") under the track:

Underlaying in progress.

This was a bit of a tedious job, but it'll give it a good ballast shoulder and it's the right thing to do. What made it a little more tricky was I had to lay the track exactly where I wanted it, then cut the cork underneath and then lift it all again to drill a 1cm hole under every point for the point motor arms to go through and then lay it all again and secure it.
The next jobs were to wire the main feed so that I could switch between a small siding which I will use as the programming track and into the DCC power bus, wire up the lights on the inspection pit with a button to turn them on and off and convert the turntable to DCC (in fact, I'll do a whole post about the turntable).