Rewiring -- CP DRAINS

Drains was the name of the station at the lowest elevation on John Allen's Gorre & Daphetid. I wound up naming the lowest point on my layout for Drains, although at 40 or so inches above the floor, it's a lot higher than Drains n the G&D. Here is a photo I took a dozen or so years ago:

I was never completely satisfied with the scenery here, but over time, It's gotten pretty dusty and beat-up. In addition, the scenery to the left of the loco was never finished very well. In addition, the rewiring project has reached this location. It was originally built about 1994 using techniques inherited from the layout in its former location. In particular, it used my earlier method of mounting a twin-coil switch machine on a piece of plywood:

The old Eshelman turnout link I used with this type of installation is wearing out, and there are now only a few of these switch machines on the main line. My first objective was to tear this out at CP DRAINS, removing the fascia and getting rid of the kludge wiring:

Mounting a Tortoise here was a tight fit, and I've spent a week tweaking the install. I put in a Circuitron Smail, which is a Tortoise with a built-in DCC decoder. extended the DCC bus, and put in a terminal strip:

CP DRAINS had a first-generation setup with relays to control the signals. This in fact has dangled as and where shown under the layout for 20 years. This will be "remanufactured", rewired, and installed in a permanent location:

Here is how things looked up above last week:

Here is the area with the Smail installed and rewiring under way:

At this point the signal is completely disconnected and may be replaced. Below looks toward the newer scenery construction: