On a model railway there are some things that that are needed for good operation but the viewer will never see.

I’ve spent the week working on these ‘odd jobs’.

Firstly, I’ve soldered wires to rail joiners to create some power feeds for the track.

Yes, there are a lot of them for a small layout. There will be six isolated sections that will need their own power supply and I decided to add more power feeds than are really required. Redundancy in electrics isn’t a bad thing!

Next up, the points (switches). I’ve drilled some holes in the sleepers so that I can fix them in place using track screws and sprayed them with grey primer. Then I soldered a power feed to the frog. This should give smoother running of the locos.

Finally, I’ve soldered wires to the Seep point motors. The wires will be connected to a ‘chocolate block’ connector so that the motor can be removed and replaced (if necessary) without soldering. Not my idea, I got it from Michael Campbell’s masterclass on installing Seep point motors. (Thanks for this Michael. It must have taken some time to write and it’s really helpful). The wires will power the motor and the frog, and go to the toggle switch that will control/switch the point.

These might look like boring jobs, but I find soldering strangely satisfying.

Plus, it’s been very cold in England this week and a hot soldering iron has helped keep me warm 🙂