The saga continues...To answer Davey T first; The detail is still to be decided, but the concept is to build a layout focussed on operating, and based on LNER territory in the North of England and Scotland. More on this later.
As the following picture (... 4283 jpg)of the main fiddle board shows, the level of clutter in the railway room has been reduced, This is the relatively tidy end of the room.

- The English Fiddle yard mounted on the transit cradle
- reduced English fiddleDSCF4283.jpg (64.74 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
Some of the bench framework is in place, but a shortage of timber to complete one of the corners persuaded me to change direction for a few days.
The "English" Fiddle yard has been mounted vertically on trestles so that I can inspect and trace the wiring. The Boards are called" English" after the builder, a late member of the Falmouth & District MRC from where the boards were obtained last year.
The preliminary visual survey revealed the following:
a. The 12 road storage track is NS on copper clad sleepers, on which there is some oxidisation which will need to be treated. ( an opportunity to experiment with " on-board" cleaning methods; suggestions welcomed)
b. There is a manual Turntable, with slide bolts for power supply to the table; in need of TLC to replace missing side bolts.
c. D connectors on the lower edge, at the entrance, a 15way D socket, at the other end a 25 way D socket.
d. At the centre edge, is a pair of double row tag strips with 72 available double tags.
e. Connected to the tag strips, an umbilical bundle of wires with a 50 pin D plug

- Tag strip and Umbilical
- reduced English FiddleDSCF4285.jpg (64.93 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
f. The board has been designed for DC, and has an imaginative method of reducing the number of track-power wires by attaching droppers shared between pairs of adjacent track rails. [ +- -+ +- -+ +- … etc] Fault tracing could be an interesting exercise.
g. All wiring appears to be 7/0.2mm probable rating 1.4 amp.
h. Qty. 13 Peco board-top mounted point motors with slide switches on top, linked by recessed wire in tube to moving sleeper type TOU.

- Points connected by surface link and wire in tube
- resized English fiddle DSCF4288.jpg (64.01 KiB) Viewed 5097 times
i. 5 of the motors appear intact with correctly working linkages
j. The remaining motors will require to be re-attached having been dislodged during transit and storage.
k. One or two may need to be replaced.
l. All bar one of the linkages is intact and the points operable.
m. The shorter extension board has 12 tracks and a 25 way D socket.
The wiring on the underside can be traced fairly easily, but the D sockets will be more difficult to de-cypher; unfortunately, the original builder's circuit diagrams and notes are not available. The next decision is whether to spend a lot of time tracing all of the connections through the sockets, or to start again and wire for DCC.
cheers all,