In my previous Controlling Interest posts I have discussed changes being made to a number of layout control items on Fisherton Sarum. For the last number of weeks the layout has been set up in its entirety at my local Model Railway Society , the High Wycombe and District MRS (whom have a nice new website also worth taking a look at..) initially to enable a photoshoot for a future magazine article to take place along with preparation for its planned appearance at the Basingstoke show.  Unfortunately, due to ill health I was unable to attend this show (but is now booked to attend next years show instead) and the layout has stayed at the Society Rooms enabling it to be running at this Saturday’s HWDMRS open day and also means it can fully prepared before its visit to the Hornby magazine exhibition at Hartlepool in July.

This prolonged period of having the layout set up has enable a number of items of work to be carried including:

Signals
There are two working LSWR lattice post signals on Fisherton Sarum, built from Model Signal Engineering components, based on two actual signals at Salisbury. These will be the subject of a View from the line post in the future, but I have recently repaired the east end bracket signal that was damaged at the last show and both have had their paintwork touched up.

Remote Signal Operation
Before the last show I attended I added a third controller to the set up so that each fiddle yard operator can now drive trains towards them, whilst the third controller allows shunting the shed area to be carried out. This balances the workload between each yard operator, and to enhance this further I have now added a remote signal switch to each of the fiddle yard indicator panels to allow them to operate the approach signal at their end without having to move across  to the main control panel. This is controlled by a ‘Local/Remote’ switch on the main panel, this provides an interlock to ensure that only the panel or fiddle yard switches can operate the signals at any one time.  After a bit of head scratching and the addition of a couple of diodes in the circuit this is now fully functional.

Turntable
As per my Controlling Interest#2 Turning Tables post with the grateful help of fellow HWDMRS member Mark Riddoch the Turntable is now controlled by a  Model Railway Electronic Group (MERG) turntable control unit.  After initial installation there appeared to have been an issue with the counter clockwise alignment (to take up any slack when turning counter clockwise the MERG unit is designed to rotate past the selected track and then move clockwise back for final alignment) this has now been identified as being due to a small amount of slip in the connector joining the turntable drive shaft and the output shaft from the gearbox and this has now revised and I am pleased to say the turntable rotation and alignment is now quiet smooth and accurate in both directions.

In addition to the above I have also carried out a general touch up of the scenery in some places and paid attention to some of the track joins to improve running.