New Incline

 Last Sunday I wrote about having trains running by Friday. That didn't happen. I had to order some more cork off ebay which arrived on Thursday. I painted it yesterday and it's ready to go onto the layout. The incline has been installed and I padded out a section with some green foam which I bought at Bunnings a long time ago. It now looks like this:

Compare it to before.

This time I have more space for the track. It will be laid directly onto the cork on top of the plywood incline. In the image above you can see where the incline is exposed. It had picture mounting board on it, if fact the rest of it still does and you can see the same closer to the camera. I used this method on my last layout and it ran faultlessly. Like last time I used 4th radius set track on the inner curve, however, this time I also used it on the outer curve with some short straight sections in between each double curve section to help maintain the space between the tracks. I also used set track spacing which is wider. I did this to speed up track laying of a slightly tricky bit. The cardboard was wider, but it hung over the side of the Woodland Scenics foam inclines. I propped up the edges with some foam core board. This wasn't always spot on. I'd rushed the job originally and spent way too much time fixing bits if it.

Hopefully, by this time next week, trains will be running again.

Until next time.

Stuff Has Happened

 In the last few months a lot of stuff has happened. But if I didn't blog it, did it really happen?

The last post finished with more track painting. That was done. 

I put in a section a section above the mainline on the top level for a little town scene. I've now inherited all of Dad's Metcalfe buildings, so there is a row of shops roughly placed on the top.

The next stuff to be done was the baseboard next to the station. This was put in place and buildings taken out of storage. I seem to have enough buildings to build a small city - which was the idea with the first layout in this location. I've placed a few buildings on the layout to see what it looks like. See the first picture.

It's a small square with a market. I think the bus stop might need to go but realistically, the main purpose was to empty a couple of boxes.

On the rear of this square is a small goods yard, utilising Dad's Metcalfe buildings from a small shunting layout that he enjoyed building. I though it would be good to try and replicate  part of his layout. I've done my best to get something that is fun to shunt. See the next picture for that.

I've adjusted the good shed to be parallel to the other tracks and that can squeeze in an extra bogie wagon. The yard can hold 6 bogie wagons and will be shunted by a X200 rail tractor. I've yet to steal some set track points from Dad's layout.

I've also spent a lot of time running my layout. It runs really well with the odd issue.

And, living in Sydney, I went to the Epping Model Railway Club Exhibition a Rosehill Gardens. I wasn't planning on buying much but SDS had some FO carriages on special.

They run really well except for one spot - the odd issue. It's on the incline near the door of the room and a number of cars were coming off on the same spot. It's the same spot as a few other issues. It has been packed a few times and the track isn't as good as it should be. The incline changes from a Woodland Scenics foam incline to a wooden bridge back to the foam incline. I took up the track and relaid it. It seemed to work better but it failed on repetition. I adjusted wheels and bogies as well. All to no avail. Earlier today the area looked like this:

The bridge was glued at one end and when the support was placed underneath it, the support lifted the other end, nearest the camera just enough to cause some issues. I decided to fix all the issues in one go. The inner track of the incline is too close to the other tracks. This caused some clearance issues with the scenery. I'm going to bring the tracks out a bit more so that I can fix the scenery issue. This means that I'll need to realign some ballasted track from the junction and add a bit more board as I may have cut the board to narrow originally. 

To do this, I have cut a new section of plywood running replacing the bridge and the incline. Hopefully, in the next couple of days, I'll be able to cut some timber supports and paint the new board.

I'm hoping to get trains running by Friday night.

Until next time.