The rebirth of the Canyon State RR

[ezdays]

The ballast looks great, I may be another one to use it, only in N scale.

Started to wire, and just thought I'd pass on something I've been doing for  a while now. I'm drilling through a couple of layers of foam and two sides of a hollow-core door, and found an easy way to get the wires through, using straws. I don't know if this is a common way to get the wires from one side to the other, so it may not be unique, but here it is anyway.

I drill a 1/4" hole through everything then push the straw through the hole. I then push the wire through and tag the end. The wires will eventually go to terminal strips. I'm using solid wire, so it's easy this way. I did use stranded wire at one time and found it was easier to push the wire through the straw first before putting it in the hole. This all saves lots of frustration and frayed wire ends. Once the wire is cut to length, I just pulled the straws back out, leaving the wires in place. I was even able to color-code the wires using different colored straws.