Tram all wired in and lots of "homework"...

If you want to see the fun bit first then here's a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxp_xPv_q1Q

I've been working away quietly these last few weekends. Doing a lot of soldering and hacking about to get the basic control systems wired into place prior to fixing the electronics in and doing the basic wiring on the rest of the layout.

I've focused a lot recently on the wiring of the core part of the layout around the station. This part has to be done first because it's where all the electronics are and has the denses wiring so I want to get that done over at my workbench as a unit and carry it all across to the layout and plonk it in. Unfortunately it means a lot (LOTS) of soldering and tinning wires nicely.

You can see all the wires I've prepared to solder to the rails for power. One end raw and tinned up to attach to teh track, the other end with a nice post soldered on with some heat-shrink to plug the wire into a socket for eventual connection back to the controllers. 

 
An example of how it connects to the rails below...

And now for the tram. Basically, the track is in place and is wired up including the sensors. You can see them in the photos below.

And here's the whole track...

And now for the movie...The system is fully automated and run by Arduino. It's a basic program that pauses the tram at each station (ends of the line) for about 10 seconds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxp_xPv_q1Q