PanelWorks™ is open to everyone, and it is a complete service, not just a designer. Draw your mimic panel in your web browser and we make it for you, in our own workshop. Take as much of it as you want: just the engraved panel face, the face in a sloping enclosure made to fit it, or the whole thing, with every button, LED, cable and System2 board it needs to come to life. It is a one-stop shop: however far you take it, it all comes from us.
We are the same small team that designs the System2 boards to run your panel, built the designer you draw it in, and cuts your panel on our own laser. One set of people to deal with, from the first line you draw to the last LED you fit.
From a panel face to the whole panel
You choose how far to take it:
- The panel. An engraved panel face on a precision-cut MDF backing, made to your drawing in any size up to 500 × 400 mm. Painted by us, or left for you to paint.
- The panel in its own enclosure. Choose a sloping or a flat enclosure and PanelWorks™ designs it around your panel for you. It arrives as a flat pack with illustrated instructions, ready to build.
- The complete panel. Add the System2 boards, buttons, LEDs and cables that make it work. The designer works out exactly what your panel needs, and one click puts the lot in your basket.
A year in the making
Until now, every mimic panel we made began the same way: your sketch, a drawing made up in our workshop, and proofs going back and forth by email until it was right. Our archive holds hundreds of them.
PanelWorks™ puts that drawing board on your own screen, and it took us a year to build. Everything those panels taught us went into it: black track with neat 45-degree corners, the button on the point itself, an LED for each way a point can be set, one button to work both points of a crossover, and room behind every button for the board it is mounted on.
“Bloody marvellous! Wow. Have you had any sleep in the last year?”
— one of our customers
Draw it in your web browser
There is nothing to install, and designing costs nothing. Open the mimic panel designer, lay out your roads, drop in the points, and put the buttons and LEDs where you want them. It copes with anything from a small yard to a busy junction.
Its track pieces include ordinary, Y and three-way points, crossings, single and double slips, bridges and 2:1 slopes, with colour-light and semaphore signals, push-buttons, toggle switches, LEDs, labels, platforms, turntables and building outlines to go with them. Track you cannot see on the layout, such as storage loops behind the backscene, can be drawn dashed, and the roads and LEDs can be coloured to suit.
Checked as you draw, priced as you go
The designer checks your panel while you work on it. If a button is too close to an LED, a label runs into the track or a part sits too near the edge, it says so there and then, in plain English, and names the part so you can put it right. A design that passes is a panel our workshop can make.
The price is on the screen the whole time. Make the panel bigger, add a colour or an enclosure, and you see what it does to the figure straight away, long before you order anything.
Press Render and you can turn your panel round in 3D, sitting in its enclosure. Share 3D view gives you a link to send to the rest of the club so they can have a look too. And if something puzzles you, Report an issue sends us your drawing exactly as it is on your screen, so we see what you see.
Six panels to start from
Six sample panels come with the designer, from a 250 × 150 mm quayside to a 500 × 400 mm parkway station. You will find them under Saved designs: open one, change it, and make it your own. Click a picture to see that panel’s proof full size.
Ashcombe Junction500 × 300 mmA double-track main line through a station, with a double junction for the Kingsbridge branch, two crossovers each worked by one button, a bay and a goods yard.
Brackenford450 × 250 mmA single-line oval. The station loop is entered over a crossover worked by one button, and the hidden storage loops behind the backscene are drawn dashed in red.
Carrow Bridge400 × 400 mmAn oval main line and a through line to a fiddle yard, with a branch carried over the oval on a bridge to a terminus set by green route buttons.
Dunmore Depot350 × 250 mmA double-track main line and an engine depot picked out in yellow, with a turntable, an engine shed and a coal road.
Elm Quay250 × 150 mmThe smallest of the six: a quay siding, a dock tramway in blue crossing the main line on the level, and a high-level line passing over on a bridge.
Fenwick Parkway500 × 400 mmA double-track oval with four platforms, single and double slips, a scissors crossover, carriage sidings and a branch in yellow.Every panel and enclosure picture in this article is drawn by PanelWorks™ itself, just as it draws your own panel in 3D and as a proof. They are not photographs.
Painted by us, or by you
Your panel face is engraved on our laser and the engraving filled with paint. Black is included in the price; red, blue and green are £10 each, and yellow is £20. The designer will tell you that yellow covers badly and is not a good colour match, and we would much rather you knew that before you chose it. Or choose an unpainted face, and paint it yourself.
Behind the face sits a 4 mm MDF sub-panel, cut with a hole for every LED, button and switch exactly where you put them, and each part’s name is engraved beside its hole on the back. When you come to fit the parts, nothing goes in the wrong place.
Our logo goes on the panel face. If you would rather it did not, taking it off costs £20. It comes off the face only: the enclosure keeps its engraving.
A sloping enclosure, designed for you
Choose a sloping or a flat enclosure and PanelWorks™ designs it around your panel automatically. There is nothing more to draw. It is made to fit your panel exactly, cut from birch-faced plywood chosen for its size, its joints made to slot together, and engraved with the MegaPoints logo on its front and rear.
Set the slope and the height at the front yourself, or leave them to the designer. Every enclosure starts with a cable opening in the middle of its rear wall and a pair of keyholes for hanging it on a wall, and you can add more openings, round or square, in the walls or the base, wherever your wiring needs them. It is priced in with your panel the moment you choose it, and you see it in 3D before you order.
The enclosure on its ownBirch-faced plywood, its joints made to slot together, with our logo engraved on the front and the rear.
And with its panel on topThe panel sits flush on the walls, here drawn see-through so you can see the enclosure underneath.It arrives as a flat pack, with its own illustrated pages showing how it goes together.
And everything that makes it work
A panel only comes to life when it does something, and that is what our System2 boards are for. Each button throws its point (or, with a System2 Route Processor, sets a whole route), and each pair of LEDs shows which way its point is set, so your panel always matches the layout. Your trains carry on as normal: System2 works the points and signals, and your DC or DCC train control is untouched.
You do not have to work out what to buy. The designer counts your buttons, switches and LEDs and picks the System2 boards that cover them for the least money. Then it adds the buttons with their cables, caps in your colours, the LED cables and any toggle switches, each one linked to its page in our shop.
System 2 Mini PanelTakes 8 buttons and 8 pairs of LEDs£55.68 inc VAT
System 2 Panel ControllerTakes 16 buttons and 16 pairs of LEDs£83.52 inc VAT
System2 Input-32Takes 32 buttons or switches£83.52 inc VAT
System2 Output-32Takes 32 pairs of LEDs£83.52 inc VATOne click puts the whole list in your basket, where you can change or remove anything, and the same list comes with your order email. All of it is optional: have every part, some of it, or none. The electronics are an order of their own and go by our usual post, so they need not wait for your panel.
New to System2? Our five-minute presentation shows a kit coming together, and the whole range is explained here.
Nothing is made until you approve it
When your design is ready, order and pay for your panel at the checkout. Our workshop then goes over your drawing: every road and label, every button and LED, and the room each part needs behind the panel. If anything needs putting right we tell you, and we email you a final proof. Nothing is made until you have approved it.
Your panel is then made to order, here in the UK, and normally leaves us two to three weeks after you order it. Once it is paid for, you also get its own assembly guide by email, drawn from your design: your panel as we make it, every part by its name, the back of the sub-panel as you will hold it, how each part goes in, and your enclosure’s own illustrated pages.
Within the UK it travels by Royal Mail Special Delivery. Outside the UK it goes by courier, charged at cost: we tell you the cost once it is packed and weighed. You are welcome to collect it from us instead, by prior arrangement.
And our promise: the panel you receive matches the proof you approved. If it does not, we make it again at our cost.
What it costs
Designing costs nothing, and you pay only when you order. A panel is priced by its size, including VAT and black paint:
- 300 × 200 mm: £250
- 400 × 300 mm: £400
- 500 × 400 mm: £600
Other sizes are priced on the same sliding scale, and the designer shows you the exact figure as you draw. On top of that come any extra colours, an enclosure if you choose one (priced by its size the moment you do), and the parcel: packing and Royal Mail Special Delivery come to £26.65 for a panel on its own, or £35.05 with its enclosure. The electronics are priced in our shop in the usual way.
Have a go
Choose PanelWorks™ in the menu at the top of any page, or go straight to megapointscontrollers.co.uk/panelworks. Enter your email address, type in the six-digit code we send you, and the designer opens. There is no password to remember, and your designs are saved to your email address, so they follow you to any computer you sign in on.
You will want a computer with a mouse or trackpad. On a phone or tablet some parts of the designer are hard to use, and some, such as turning a piece of track, cannot be reached at all.
As ever, if anything does not make sense, drop us a line. We would much rather you asked.
Dave & Sheila