555 delay timer not working, it does not delay at all
You have created what is called a "race condition". You're hoping that pin 2 (trigger) goes high before pin 4 (reset) does, so that the chip stays in reset until the trigger falls below 1/3 Vcc again, 5 seconds later. But they effectively go high at the same time, and there's no guarantee about how the chip will behave in that case.

You need to add an RC circuit to pin 4 so that it definitely rises more slowly than pin 2 does.

Unfortunately, the typical datasheet for the 555 does not specify a "reset recovery" time, but I would assume that something on the order of 1 &micro;s would be more than enough. It also doesn't specify anything about VIH or VIL for the reset pin, which uses a PNP transistor in a configuration that is not typical of most forms of logic. I would probably use a time constant of about 10 &micro;s and see how well it works. You end up with something like this:







simulate this circuit &ndash; Schematic created using CircuitLab



Actually, now that I think about it some more, having pin 6 tied to pin 2 should guarantee the behavior of the circuit anyway, regardless of what happens on the reset pin. I'm not sure why your non-breadboard circuit isn't working. Are you sure you copied the circuit exactly?