British Finescale Track - Part 2

British Finescale - Flex track

As well as the turnout kit, building the scale 60ft lengths of straight flex track was far more straight forward - it simply involves threading two lengths of rail (making sure to get it the correct way up) into the 3D printed webbed chairs which are securly held in the jig as shown below -

 

Above are my first attempts to solder two 60ft sections together after fitting the metal rail joiners (far fiddler to fit than the traditional peco ones!) and then adding dropper wires. In hindsight, I should've used smaller gauge wire as soldering 16 AWG is difficult due to the comparatively smaller surface area of the code 40 rail underside.

More testing and wiring

 So today was pretty productive.

The track is still not fully permanent but dropper fishplates have been installed, wiring has been permanently connected and I even added a convenient little holder for the controller.

I've decided to stick with the included R7229 controller, because despite all of its faults its just plain nicer to use than the HM DC bluetooth app and even after fiddling around with all of the circuit PWM settings I'm not convinced its doing any better. I may upgrade to a nicer gaugemaster combi or similar at some point but it's not a priority now.

I'm pleased with how easy the wiring turned out, and I can easily add in the HM 7000 adapter cable in the same way too when I go to DCC.

Just awaiting a pin vice drill from Amazon and then I'll be sticking the track down permanently. I also want to paint the non-scenic areas with some primer just so it doesn't look quite so unfinished.