It was a busy week last week, i managed to get the first two boards of my Civil AP work completed. I can only work on two boards at a time, there will be a third board which will contain the 14 degree crossing which is the third trackwork item i am working on. 

The first two boards contains #5 turnouts (3 of them but only one counts) and a #5 crossover. Having previously fitted the ties i stained them with a dark wood stain. 

I then test fitted my turnouts 

Once i knew everything was lined up i sprayed the turnouts with camo brown car spray paint and cleaned the rail heads with a wood block before the paint dried. 

The the hard part started i had the get the rails spiked down, i use micro engineering code 100 weathered rail and medium spikes. Straight away i ran into problems with the road bed offering zero resistance when i tried to drive my spikes. At this point though i was just glad i hadn’t ballasted the roadbed yet.

Having condluded that woodland scenics road bed was no good for hand spiked track i decided to drill pilot holes for my spikes to try and easy the pressure on the road bed. I used a #70 drill bit and a pin vice to make the holes and spiked every 6-8 ties. I will go back and add spikes on every tie later. 

This is a photo after the rails were laid but not yet wired up. Before i installed the track work i had soldered feed wires to the underside of the  rails and fitted the wires straight through the road bed and baseboard top before spiking. 

My top tips for track laying in this way are:

1. Start from a datum end and always work away from that point.
2. Use an NMRA gauge when spiking, make sure you check the rails are in gauge, fit one rail in then use the gauge to fit the second 
3. Use weights to hold the rails in place when you spike them. 

To wire up the turnouts i used Gaugemaster DCC80 Auto frogs these are basically the same as a Tam Valley Frog Juicer but much cheaper and without the screw terminals you have to solder your feed wires. The image below shows how i gap my turnouts enabling metal fishplates to be used throughout and a single wire to feed the frog.
I used ground throws above the baseboard to throw the turnouts i decided this was the simplest way for the judges to test the model. 

So that meant the wiring was much more simplified. I installed a DCC Bus and connected the auto frogs to it and then to the frog feeder wire.

With these boards done i could erect board 3 which will have the crossing on it and i have installed the roadbed.