My friend Stephen was rash enough to include me in a layout work party yesterday along with Trevor, Dan and James. Stephen is building a representation of Toronto’s Liberty Street industrial area in HO in a spare room. It is a compact switching layout that I am looking forward to seeing run. Stephen has a particular interest in architecture and has researched the prototypes of all the structures planned.
It being an extremely rainy day made it a good time to spend an afternoon indoors. I arrived already medicated with antihistamines since I am allergic to cats. The cat in question is a Siberian and alleged to be hypoallergenic. It seems to be a thing because I suffered no ill effects other than from the meds despite Gandalf being a gloriously fluffy boy.
Getting the bus wires connected to the track feeders was the first work item so Trevor and I each started at an end since the middle was not finalized. Stephen had a go and then we got to have fun debugging the errors in wiring which took a while since the shorts that manifested were not in the wiring. Eventually, bridged PC board tie gaps and missing gaps were detected and remedied. This sort of thing goes better with multiple participants if only for the social pressure to not throw things.
The other major work was sorting out and fitting the complicated trackage feeding the peninsula in the middle of the layout. This was primarily Trevor and Dan and was still going on when I fled for home ahead of forecast freezing rain.
All this verbiage and a cat picture because I am terrible at remembering to take the action shots. Fortunately, others are more competent at that part of the hobby and so you can visit Stephen and Trevor for other perspectives as well as actual photos.
A Model Meander 