Botanic Gardens is the main focus of the East Yorkshire Area Group of the Scalefour Society. The layout is based on a former North Eastern Railway (NER) suburban station in west Hull that disappeared when the lines to Hornsea and Withernsea, and the low level line to Hull's Eastern Docks were closed in the 1960s. The track layout is relatively simple but the project combines plenty of buildings, varied traffic and a tramway. The layout is owned by Hull MRS and those working on the layout are members of both the Scalefour Society and the Hull MRS.
Work continues with the layout's track and electrics.

Dave is continuing his sterling work with the electrics, and the jumper cable in particular. We decided that we would have sockets at each end of the boards and a jumper cable to join them, rather than have a jumper attached permanently to the board at one end and a socket at the other. We felt that this hanging cable would be vulnerable during set up and knock down - plus with a clumsy person like me, the separate jumpers are much safer! We will have spares to account for any failures we may experience at shows. The law according to Sod says that with spares to hand we are unlikely to have problems, but if we have no spares available... well you know the rest!
Adding the droppers is often best accomplished as a pair, so as Chris was away sunning himself on a barge somewhere in East Anglia, I worked on a slightly different task.

Adding the half chairs can be a laborious job, but it can be quite relaxing - in the right frame of mind, I find it a rather relaxing task! So I made a start adding half chairs to the three way turnout following the completion of the electrical work.

It's very satisfying to see the difference that this process makes, even if it is on only a small part of the yard. Just after finishing this, I went off to work to play with the big train set!
There should be another update very soon.
Following the successful testing of the previous board, we moved straight on to the next board! The wiring on this one is very simple compared with the last one. Our first task was the removal of the old DC wiring, which we felt wasn't up to the job now the layout is DCC - the dropper wires were very thin indeed.

We installed new droppers for the two mainlines. We took the chairs off in strategic locations and drilled beneath the rail so the new droppers would be entirely hidden once the chairs have been reinstated. This has worked very well previously. We use an inverted 'L' to maximise the contact between dropper and the rail.
Dave is currently working on the jumper cables between the boards and our continued electrical work is progressing in unison so each will be able to back the other when it comes to testing.
Elsewhere work continues on the station building and various items of rolling stock all of which are progressing very well!
Tonight we have another update on the station building!

The roof and chimneys are now fixed in place and Chris has started to add the posters which are all made using genuine North Eastern Railway posters edited in Photoshop. They really have breathed life into the building! The building will be one of the focal points of the layout and Chris has done a superb job with the building.
We had a very productive night tonight; the main 'yard' board has been thoroughly tested and it all works! We're very pleased and we can now move on and wire up the other boards which are plain line so should progress quite quickly.