Laying track and making electrical
connections:

With the layout outside the briefcase, I laid the track in place, punched holes through the foam with one of my jeweler's screwdrivers where the hookup wire had been soldered to the track, and threaded the wire through the holes.

Then I lifted the track carefully and ran a bead of Noch Merkur Special Glue around the roadway. I lowered the roadbed onto the glue and placed a heavy book and some other convenient items on top of the track to hold it firmly down while the glue dried overnight.

After the track was secure, I removed the phone jack from the briefcase and soldered the free ends of the hookup wire to the jack's leads. For some reason, the phone jack has three leads for wiring. The ones to use are the two facing each other.

I refastened the phone jack in place in the briefcase.  Then cut two 16-inch pieces of hookup wire. One end of each was soldered to the leads in the phone plug. The other ends were each soldered to a Radio Shack #6 Spade-Tongue Terminal to make it easier to fasten the wires to the power supply.

When I tried to reinsert the foam into the briefcase I found that I needed to enlarge the notch to make room for the hookup wire attached to the phone jack.

I cut two small pieces of Merkur roadbed to fill in the gaps where the hookup wire was soldered to the track. Then used a little Raw Umber from the Earth Color Kit to touch up a few places on the roadbed where I accidentally smeared a little foam putty and where some of the ballast had been knocked off.

With the power supply output plugged into the briefcase, I placed my Marklin Track Cleaner Car onto the track for a test. It ran fine, but was very noisy. After running for several minutes to clean up the track I traded the Track Cleaner for my Denver & Rio Grande Western engine and tender. They were much quieter.