Once I knew Whittingham Hospital would be off to be shown at the NEC, I had a few preparation jobs to do. One was the broken platform lamp. I'd superglued it in place, so I had to remove the platform barrow and use pliers pivoting on a block of wood.
The wires passed through a hole in the baseboard, which of course didn't line up with the lamp. I drilled a new, big hole as close as I could to the lamp, and after some fiddling and extracting bits of debris, I could pass a stiff wire through. I soldered solid-core wire extensions onto the new wires so I could pass them through like a needle, and connect them up to the screw terminal block.
The lamp was the fixed with a little matt Modge Podge, which sets slowly hence the tweezers holding it in place, but should part easily if (when) I come to remove it again. Which I will definitely do when I relay the track and add a point! Actually this is now the third lamp here, the second broke when the board moved and my hand slipped while fitting it... so now there are no more spares.
I wasn't sure if there would be power for the lights when it is on show, so I got some cheap battery holders and screwed them under the rear edge of the board. They give 9 volts, same as the output from the regulator, and a quick calculation suggests they should last 48 hours! The socket for the transformer has also been fitted here too, and a switch powers the lights either from the transformer (left), batteries (right), or off (centre).
The lights under the canopy were a bit bright and white, so I painted over them with yellow acrylic... which seems to have toned them down and given them the colour of sodium lights. Just what I was hoping for. Both platform lights now work too...
My son pointed out that while my backscene was sky colour, the plain MDF outer ends might be an eyesore for an adjacent module if that has no backscene. So I gave the outer faces a quick coat of the same sky colour.
The building roofs needed fixing down. I used a bead of matt Modge Podge around the edge, again it seems to hold the roof firmly but hopefully the bond can be broken without damage should I ever need to remove them again.
I'm happy that I'd managed to make the boiler house and engine shed doors openable, but that means they can flap around as the board is moved, and might stay closed. I thought I'd better pin them open, but so that they could be closed if wanted. I bent some springy steel fine wire as shown...
The long "leg" of the wire was superglued into a hole in the ground so that the inverted V shape peaks just above the bottom of the door. The doors can swing over the wire, which springs back up to hold the door open. Pushing the wire down will release the door. The wires were painted matt dark grey, camouflaging them. They ay get removed if not needed later, but for now the doors are safely held open.
Finally, the layout was packed up in the box the baseboard kit came in. This explains the height limit rule of course. The box is longer than the board, so some card packing was added each end. Fortunately, I don't need to post it, as Gaugemaster is one of the collection locations, so I took a short drive over there yesterday to drop it off. It seems appropriate as the track and most of the building materials came from Gaugemaster.
