Can’t believe how quickly time passes – as it’s been months (ok embarrassingly, it’s been 3 months) since my last post. No excuse really; however, in my defense I’ve been busy downstairs WORKING on the layout. As those of you who blog and work on a layout know, sometimes it can be difficult to do BOTH.

New Year’s Day is always a big train day for me as we hold our annual open house/new years day party. It’s the big event where I try to get something substantial accomplished to show off to my non train friends and the neighborhood kids. This year was no different…

Over the holidays I really got a lot of work done and have all but finished the under layout (partially) hidden 10 staging tracks. I knew that I wanted to use tortoise switch machines  here so I installed 12 of them and built a control panel.

YES…I (an electrical idiot) build and wired a control panel! How you may ask did I navigate the world of DPDT switches and bi-directional red/green LEDS? YouTube of course. Found an excellent series by csxmad on YouTube that took me through the design and build of a panel, step-by-step  again proving that you can find anything online.

Check out the excellent Wiring Leds & Dwarf Signals for Control Panel –  Model Trains Part 17  for how I created this wonderful mess!