Track next then...

I've had another busy day in the garage and pretty much all the woodwork is finished on the new baseboards. There is still a long way to go but I can now see what the finished railway will look like, in my mind's eye, at least.

I've actually done a bit more than in the picture but you get the idea. I've rummaged out some pcb sleeper strip and found the Araldite amongst the chaos so when I get a minute the next thing to do is to glue some sleepers on the edges of the removable section so I can start laying track. having given it some considerable thought I'm going to start with bridge and work outwards from there. I'm going to use some of the new PECO set track on the bit underneath St Ruth as it will be easier than buggering about trying to lay flexible with such little headroom.

Once I finished doing woodwork in the room with the layout in I decided the next thing to do was to have a good clear up and to fetch Henry the vacuum cleaner and have jolly good clean. Once I'd done that I even dusted and cleaned up the music studio which has been covered in dust and tools during the 'big push'.

Not only clean but still working

I wish I had some more time available to get on with track laying and the electrics, this is the really daunting bit. St Ruth is more or less wired up but has no control panel so all the wiring terminates in at the end of a 50 way multicore. I'm hoping that the record I made when wiring it all up in the first place makes sense still... I haven't dared look yet. I have to build three control panels now, one for each terminus and one for the middle station; I may start in the middle as it only has three points and a couple of signals.

The other thing I'm doing at the moment is making up a new loco from Neil Rushby. It is a little battery electric job, a very tidy resin molding on the inevitable KATO 104 chassis. It only needed the sacrificial bits of the molding removing with a razor saw, knife and file. The couplings are separate parts but otherwise it is just one bit of resin; I've added hand rails to the cab but otherwise it just needs painting now. I'm going for black rather than the yellow one Neil has done.

When the loco arrived at double quick time, I was delighted to find that Neil had included a couple of 'Herb Vans'. These are slightly dodgy moldings of his splendid Darjeeling tea van, you can't order these as the mold is rather tired so these were a much appreciated gift. The islanders will be much appreciative of the enhanced supply of the local 'herb' that these vans will allow. They will need a bit of work to get them ready but will be fine.