The first bit to sort out was the hump from Brewery Lane down the incline. It was pretty sharp so I put in a bit of packing to ease the bend. It's looking a lot better now. The packing still looks a bit shabby.
Next, I took out a point on the line to the wheat silos (or where they will be). The finished image is below. This was going to a yet to be determined industry. However, it would mean the operator would need to uncouple the wagon at Awdry and propel the wagon to the other side of the layout and past the bloke who is operating the main yard. I would need this point later.
Away from the Awdry Branch, on the lowest level, North Bega Steelworks needed some modifying. Being on the low level and down the front, this will probably be the last area finished. The steel works receives steel coils and turns them into wire coils. The steel coils are delivered into a shed and the wire is loaded in another shed. The steel coil siding needed to be lengthened by one wagon length and part of the track lowered as the wagons had a habit of running out of their imaginary shed. The same thin was happening with the wire coil wagons.
As I use vinyl flooring under my track instead of cork, this was taken away and the track replaced onto the bare boards. It's working so far.
Next to the Steelworks is the container terminal. The container wagons have the same problem of running way here too. I slipped a piece of folded card (an old waybill) under the tracks. This is working well at the moment too.
From here it was a trip with the work gang back to Awdry for the planned work on the oil depot.
The cattle siding was shortened and then lengthened at the last minute. The points in the depot were taken up and replaced as planned in the photo in the last blog post.
It was looking great... and then I put the oil tanks back in.
The middle track remained in place through the whole remodelling. All I did was to put the Peco Streamlined point in where the had been a Set Track point. It is exactly the same length as before, however, now there is less clearance for the LPG tank. This is because the Set Track points curve away more sharply. I didn't think about that.
Am I going to change it?
No way. It will add a bit more shunting for the operator to carry out.
You might notice the green and red dots next to the points. This is to let the operators know where the points need to be when they have finished using them. The tie bar needs to be pushed away from the red and towards the green. When I finish adding scenery I'll place something red or green next to the points. At the moment, they are training operators.
All of this was done before lunch. Hooray for me!
I hadn't tested it.
It wasn't until I sat down and started writing this post that I thought that I had better check that it all worked.
If you're still with me here, let me tell you about comprehension skills. When we read, we use different strategies to help us comprehend what we are reading. One of these strategies is predicting what a text might be about or might happen next with what we are reading.
By now you'll have predicted that there were problems. My 50 class derailed on the Y point. It was pretty consistent. I'm not sure why (no pun intended) as I have another of these points on the entry to the loco depot and the 50 class has no troubles with that point.
There was another one which I could test. Frog's Hollow has a small three siding goods yard with a Y point. The 50 class hated this one more than the one at Awdry. The solution was to remove the spring above the front bogie and see if that helped. The result was a 100% success rate through both of the Y points. I'm not sure of the rest of the points on the layout and the effect the lack of spring will have. For now it works.
The spring has been put into a small plastic bag which has been labelled, and put into a safe place, which has also been labelled.
Other stuff that I have done in the past few days had been to fix the alignment of the drop down bridge. It was held in place by two bolts. If it didn't go down well then you could give it a bit of a shove and it would come good.
However, everybody (myself included) has a habit of leaning on it and putting it out of alignment again. A third bolt into the lower end of the drawbridge seems to hold it in place more reliably.
I also took a bit of time to put some car card boxes together for Awdry as the car card had to be placed next to the wagons. I used a drop saw on 3 or 4mm MDF but the results were not that good. I found that I can use a craft knife and a steel ruler on this instead and get a cleaner edge and a lot less nasty dust. As I need to create a few more of these, they might be able to be done in cooler air condition comfort.
Until next time.
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