Charlton Micro layout - further progress

A short update on the developing micro layout that I am  building.  I have nearly finished all of the boring jobs!  Not quite, but a large amount of progress has been made.  The back scenes are now all attached and require painting. Given the narrow width of the of the baseboards (1ft) it would have taken too much space to have a curving backboard, so I have settled with 90 degree angle in each corner.  Not ideal but I hope I will be able to disguise it.

Back scenes in place, ready for painting

General overview of the micro

The fiddle yard has been built and has a small area for continuation of a siding on the scenic side at the front. Being only 3ft long it is a very tight fit.  The entrance to the fiddle yard is a thin piece of back scene with a small hole cut into it (obviously!).  Rather than have a tunnel I am going to try to disguise this as much as possible, but not worry too much about it. The powerbus has been extended under the fiddle yard and some track has been temporarily laid down.

The small entrance to the fiddle yard

So now there are two last jobs.  The first is to install the point motors, I am using the Gaugemaster PM10s with frog juicers.  A simple fix for a small DCC layout and all seems to be working well.  The CDU is installed and it is just a case of placing the motors under the boards and wiring them up - although this is a pet hate of mine!  The second thing to do is is lay two sets of points into the fiddle yard and glue these down properly.  Just one more weekend of soldering and fixing and then the whole layout should be 100% operational!

  

Just testing out some the positioning of the buildings....

So time for the buildings.  I have some resin buildings to use, and these will be supplemented with a bit of basic scratchbuilding.  I am not great at making buildings, so each attempt gets a little bit better.  I have to make the station, which is a job to start at the end of next week.  However, I am pretty happy with the current level of progress and my aim is to finish the layout by the end of February.  I had originally gone for a Christmas date - but that now seems unduly optimistic.  The great thing about small layouts is that you can seem to make progress quickly!

A quick video of the layout working....

Now to get some type 2 sound decoders to run on a class 22 and 25.  I have finished the western.....now I wonder about a warship......this layout is definitely going to be pure BR blue and plenty of sound....