2016_09_30 Picked Roger up at the Station.
Its Liverpool weekend, and Roger Lloyd and I are heading North once again. Roger normally spends a few days working on my railway. The hope is that his inspirational presence will keep me going for another year ;)
Prior to his arrival, I had fitted the Wodonga goods shed into position, but had caused a few problems, one being the wagons were not able to clear the door.
Here is Roger fixing in a base for the model. We found some 9mm ply, cut out the track through the shed and laid thin caulk inside and found platform heights, and clearances were spot on. Like I said...inspirational :D
Cannot fit Wodonga yard in exactly, so will build car storage towards left of picture.
The ply lifts shed high enough. You can see the through track on rear wall? It is also lowered and will represent bitumen over track for vehicular access.
Long view with shed lifted and track roughed in.
The "Roarer" arrived on BG ???? Modellers license is a mysterious thing :D
2016_10_03 Back from Liverpool
The new territory now gets some track!
The long SG link road is hidden track. It sits aainst the wall and drops 210mm over 17 m. Although hidden, the operator will be able to look over the top of the "blocker" and watch his train climb,or descend.
In front of the SG will sit a level BG track which runs to a reverse loop on top of the Helix, with a mail line station built into the S bend. then return via the same line.
Roger is planning the next move, which is stringing cable and laying track to connect to that cable.
Cable is in, and now he is laying track which has droppers pre-soldered to each length. Small strips of ply are screwd and glued to side to stiffen up the ply, and stop trains dropping to floor. Remember this is hidden track.
It is hidden because I decided not to use South Grafton in the space behind where Roger is standing. It was better to keep the open area, rather than close the acces down to 900mm
2016_10_04 Continued to lay track.
And whilst Roger worked this side, I ripped out part of the silo at the top end of the old helix. Had to relay the silo yard as well as the SG loop points after replacing the ply under it with one piece of 5 ply. This was needed because the surface was just not flat enough to guarantee safe passage of trains.
Whilst working here, the old mind was ticking over. You can see the white new ply under the piece of foam? Well that was the new bit. I have already placed the BG and started to put in the SG loop points at the furterest end..
Fitting out the SG loop points
Now that I have thought things out, I have decided to install a ready made station, I have, in front of the silos. That means, I need to sweep the SG track, back towards the Silo area in order to install the station, facing the passage way.
This shows the realignment of the BG towards the edge of the baseboard. The SG with train sitting on it, is also pushed back, opening up the space for the platform between the two tracks. I now have to remove the SG crossover and push it further away from camera and realign it to the new through track alignment. Just about run out of track too. So better order some more.
And as I reached the Quarry end of the long straight, Roger poked the SG through the gap behind the center modules.
Hey Al? Look oat our clean floors :( But at least we re-commissioned the table saw. Mind you, all the junk sitting atop it, is now sitting on the layout. I need more boxes for storing things :(
Thanks Roger and Al for getting me this far along.
Cheers
Rod
