Awgate exhibition prep

With an exhibition coming up for Awngate some preparation was needed. The large exhibition fiddle yard relied on brass wiper contacts to the layout, while this works fine for the small slot-on home fiddle yard they proved vulnerable and unreliable for the larger one. So I'd decided to add a wired connection.



As you can see, both layout and fiddle yard had an RCA audio socket fitted, which have 2 coaxial connections and are easy to solder wires to. They screw into thin panel material so I had to mount them in some plasticard and screw that in place. The connection is then made with a short lead; the lead and sockets can be bought cheaply. My plan is to fit the same connector to Hexworthy and to Hexworthy's home fiddle yard too, to maintain fiddle yard interchangeability.



The layout got a good vacuuming, to get the dust off the scenery (surprising how it builds up) and spiders off the fiddle yard (from storage in the garage). Then some extensive playing testing was endured to check everything worked. Running was surprisingly good* without cleaning the track thanks to graphite previously applied, however I've added a little more graphite to make sure.



*If you don't believe me I've posted a video of a loco (with an old style N-gauge chassis) running slowly when I hadn't cleaned the track or added more graphite, or in fact run the layout properly for many months!

As for the exhibition, well if you are near Lancing this Saturday drop in to the Wealden Railway Group show and say hello!