The Deseronto Yard is proceeding. The row of Humpyard levers has been installed next to the control panel. It seems to make a lot of sense for operating a bunch of turnouts packed into a tight space and right close to the operator. I had started out using Tortoise motors but realized that it was getting pretty expensive and it was hard to keep the rather bulky units from interfering with each other.

Eventually there wiill be a nice color-coded label on all the levers (there are twenty of them) and it has been interesting thinking through what the logical groupings are for operating the turnouts. Just to the right of the throttle can be seen the corner of the control panel -- for now its just the track diagram taped to the underside of the plexiglass. Eventually there will be a sheet of aluminum supporting the art work and controls -- right now it is more of a dust cover over rows of barrier strips for terminating the DS64 cables.

So far I have two of the levers connected up. Bending a dog-leg on each wire provided the necessary spring to hold the turnout positively in each position. It also absorbs any mismatch in throw length. My approach has been to stake the turnout in the center position with a pin and then center the lever and mount the cable on the underside. This seems to work fairly well but is pretty tedious as I need to be on both sides of the benchwork to align it. I am trying to dream up an alignment jig to help the process. Superficially it is pretty trivial but the alignment and position of the cable end under the turnout is pretty finicky.

The yard itself is pretty much stable although some of the trackwork is still pretty rough. I am starting to appreciate the constraints of using commercial turnouts in tight spaces and am wishing I had had the courage to go down the hand-laid road -- oh well. A lot of learning curves in this exercise.

Wire for track feeds is still being soldered in place. In this end of the yard there are probably a dozen connections -- all tied to some small scale barrier strips on the underside. In this picture one can see the Ro-Ro elevator on the wall to the left -- this provides a staging yard that takes up precious little room and will be operated from the control panel using DCC-by-Design's enhanced controls.

One thing about this layout is that it is entirely moveable and can be pulled out from the wall and moved about in case we need to access the window or the heat pump mounted on the wall over the Ro-Ro. The legs all have teflon biscuits on the bottom so slide remarkably easily on the carpet. Keeping weight down and everything tight has been a challenge -- i do envy the people with huge basements that can afford the luxury of bolting things in place. But if this were any larger I would probably not live long enough to complete it. As is, I am amazed at how deceptively small this project seemed.