I achieved a small milestone today. A loco can now run from one end of " The Black and Blue"  to the other. We are only talking a 2X10 foot layout so that might not seem like much but it's a big deal to me.  I had soldered and dropped almost all the track feeders awhile back but I hadn't installed any buss wiring till just a few days ago.  I purchased some red and black #12 house wire at the local home improvement center and got it twisted together and then ran it under the layout.  Since then  I have been slowly but surely stripping insulation off the buss wires at various point and soldering my feeders. I had three more sets of feeders to solder to the rail and  drop  this evening and I got them done and soldered to the buss just a bit ago.  A little bit of track cleaning and I was good to go! The only remaining feeders left to be installed  are on a short track that is to continue on to stage two of the layout once it's built  and one of the tracks off the turntable which is designated to be a program track when I get a new DCC system. Hopefully a new Digitrax Zephyr Extra is in the cards sometimes early next year.   As I've stated in my blog before, I use a home built transistor throttle and a DC supply commandeered from my ham radio stuff for testing purposes right now.

Sometimes I feel like I'm getting too old to be climbing around the layout soldering feeders to buss wires  but so far I've resisted the urge to give in and use the "suitcase connectors" or IDC's  popularized by some in the Hobby media  because my late father, who was also a ham op, taught me that you soldered EVERYTHING and he would probably turn over in his grave if I even dared look  at an IDC.

So anyway, things are moving right along. Next up is painting and ballasting track and in between I'll be working on my coaling tower kit.

Thanks for everyone's interest in my blog,

Michael