Apologies for the lack of updates, I got a new laptop and lost everything from my old one, so I'd totally forgotten I had an account here!
There's been a ton of progress on the layout, and it received an invite to the Mansfield Model Railway Exhibition 2018 last weekend.
Well, Mansfield Show is over for another year, and Piedmont Blues worked out much better than I had anticipated. 
The to do list has expanded, as is to be expected after the true test of a two day show, but overall the layout performed fantastically.
During the show, further work was done on the layout, as was always the plan. I worked on the scenery whilst Ford ran trains, and then Ford worked on fine tuning the arduino controlled servos and lighting of buildings whilst I ran trains.
I can't claim to understand how it all works, but Ford used an arduino control board to work both the lights and the servos for the points.
Connected to it was an infra-red sensor, which allowed us to use a TV remote to switch the points - allowing for both switching of the points individually, and route setting - throwing multiple points with one button push to line up set routes for the locomotives to take.
"PeeBee" will be at another show next month - so for the South Nottingham Model Railway Exhibition in Bingham on 14th and 15th of April, we're hoping to have the point frogs wired up to polarity changing switches, so that when the button are pressed to change the routes, it also throws a SPDT switch to change the polarity of the frogs.
This would have been a massive benefit at Mansfield. As it stood, the frogs were dead at the show, which prevented us from using my Atlas Plymouth, and caused the slightly shorter wheelbase GP35 to stall when going one specific route, as it ended up with a truck each on two of the dead frogs at once, meaning it stalled out.
The RS3, having a slightly longer wheelbase, didn't have this issue.
There wasn't much in terms of things to buy on the trade stands for the layout - US O scale isn't exactly all the rage here. That said, I did managed to get a 3-rail K-Line flat car, which will need converting over to 2 rail, as well as a Lionel/Corgi Greyhound bus, which you can see in some of the photographs below.
So here we are. Roll on Bingham show in April! 
