So Annoyed with myself

[GWR-Kris]

My layout has been a slow process, either lack of funds or no motivation. But made a start in december to weather and ballast the station area. Well atleast make a start.

Anyhow after cleaning the rail heads and powering the layout to find that some sections do not have any power. And after some quick fault finding etc have put it down to two possibilities.
1) i have damaged the fish plates fitting the fake sleepers in.
2) the paint has gone in the fish plate and lost any connection.

So not sure what i should do next to fix this issue. guessing some ballast will have to come up to see if the fish plates are damaged or its just paint. 

[Newportnobby]

I'd suggest attaching a wire either side of any suspect rail joint just to see whether it solves the problem before pulling anything up. If it does solve the issue then attach the wire more permanently

[PLD]

If you used the classic watered down PVA to fix the ballast, that is the most likely culprit. We want capillary action to spread the glue through the ballast, but unfortunately it also takes it into any gap between rail and fishplate...
Once it's got in there, best and easiest option as Mick says is install additional droppers to the affected track sections, bridging the fishplates.

[JanW]

Or add droppers through the baseboard and connect to the track power under the layout (looks better).

[F2Andy]

Following on from JanW's comment, I would always have a dropper for every section of rail, rather than reply on fishplates. Even where there is a connection, you can have a voltage drop across a connection, and they can deteriorate over time.