2013/08/02

2013 Aug 2

2013 Aug 2  Nice day but at 2.00 the skies opened up once again, a "light" monsoon developing as this is happening every day??



Well now that both tracks have reached the "coal hole" its time to match up this end of the yard with the bits Graeme and I did a month or so ago. I need to be careful here and make sure the tracks meet exactly to be visually pleasing at least.


Just a little bit of a laugh.  I have twice this many clamps and I am a real fan of the little one handed clamps. I did buy a new pack today because I could not find any not being used.These Irwin clamps are the Bee's Knees ;) 4 for $30 at Bunnings. I am now only buying the good quality ones, because the cheap ones cannot take heavy use, tightening them up can easily break the plastic shafts used to make the trigger pivot. Not a hard job to fix, because I simply drill out the casing where the broken shaft was and replace the shaft with a bolt and a nylock nut. However it is a waste of time when a pack of 4 Irwins cost about the same per unit as a cheap one. When I returned from Bunnings I was searching for something else, and found the missing clamps :D and here is a clamp tree just to say "You cannot have too many clamps when you are building a model railroad :D



Two days on and the SG yard at Coal siding is nearly installed.
The track closest the wall is BG and the next one is the SG main. The next one forms the No2 Road of the crossing loop.
Then two more store roads and I should have three but just could not fit it all in.  The closest rail, which is yet to be laid will be the Bogie Exchange road. I will lay this in code 100 and change to code 75 inside the BE shed. The track inside the shed will be insulated and dead to DCC. This way the Unimog that will shunt the shed will need to use a match truck to shunt vehicles from the SG side and the BG pilot will do the BG side. In the 70's a BG pilot was at the Coal Hole all day. Usually F206 or F216 and I have a Trainbuilder one for the job.

So now I have all the SG work done on top of the board. Next job is to clear the clamps and also remove all the stuff stored under the middle modules and use the old mans wiring bench to fit the point motors and also connect up the wiring and install the Hex juicers and circuit breakers.

Cheers
Rod

2 comments:

  1. Funny thing about pictures.
    The last one just above simply makes me want to sob!
    I always use open frame construction, and until I saw that picture a few minutes ago, all blown up on the page I never much thought about it.
    However what a waste of material! What a waste of space. I could gain at least 70mm of separation by mounting the crosspieces inside the frame and still use risers to raise the track. I am sorely temped to rip it out and build it that way. Unfortunately it would be near impossible as I would need to remove at least one level of the helix and it would just cascade around the whole layout.
    This is indeed caused by learning things over 45 years. Lin Wescott in 1945 said that L girders was the only way to go! I now think he was wrong, particularly when building a bi-level railway.
    Cheers
    Rod Young

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    Replies
    1. oh and the only reason that I used the box method on the bottom level here was because I needed to maximise the space underneath for storage. As well I had the frames built for a tabletop exhibition layout and they fitted the space.Even though I decided they were too short and built new ones in the finish, I liked the way they looked and continued with the idea. Like I said I wish I had thought about this when I laid the top deck ;)
      Rod Young

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