...and it was all going so well

A few days ago, I decided that I'd post an update on the state of my model railway. OK, it's fair to admit that there hasn't been a lot of progress since I last mentioned it, but I had, at long last, got all the track stuck down.

I had got power to all sections of the layout and successfully run a locomotive over the whole thing. I'd even been tempted to video this, but had decided to wait until I had all the points wired up so that we wouldn't have "Hand of God" intruding into scene to operate the points when the engine was directed into a siding.

Before fitting the point motors, I realized that if I wasn't going to make it really difficult to route some of the wiring, I needed to make an extra access hole in the baseboard beneath the upper level. So I got out the power drill and a 19mm spade bit to bore some holes that would allow me to get the pad-saw in and cut a nice, hand-sized hole.

When the drill bit broke through on the first hole, I discovered an unpleasant design flaw in my grand scheme.

The drill bit burst through rather abruptly and overshot into the underside of the upper level. If it had just buried itself into the undersurface it wouldn't have been so bad. Instead of that, it simply knocked the whole upper layer off, leaving it dangling by the hideously mangled section of track spanning the gap which will, in due course, have a bridge across it.

This was a bit of a surprise.

I'd made a really good job of glueing the upper level to little wooden pillars and I've never had a problem with Evostick woodworking adhesive before. It sticks like shi... Well, let's just say it's very effective at sticking things together.
The problem wasn't that the glue had failed, it was the wretched MDF board. The surface had simply torn away from the body of the board.  The cohesive strength of Medium Density Fibre board must be feeble. It's probably harder to tear the skin off a rice pudding.

I should have used plywood.

So, a bit of a set-back.
I've cut away the wrecked section of track and will be replacing it when I've worked out how to prevent a similar MDF failure happening if I have another visit from Mr Hamfisted.

Where are you now, Isambard Kingdom Brunel?