Thursday, April 26, 2007

Milestone achieved

Hi all,

On the day that steam returned to Beddgelert for 70 years (http://www.bangor.ac.uk/ml/whr/whlatest.htm), I achieved a decent milestone on the layout too, with all boards up and all track laid apart from the hidden sidings.

- Firstly track was laid and tacked down to the two foot board. I need a couple more tacks, but the curves won't budge for the moment, so it's not an issue really.

- Then the (newly swpped at B+Q) M6 bolts were used to attach the leg to the board before I drilled the two 10mm holes for the M10 bolts (joining the two boards together). Below shows the first 'train' to make the join - a liliput bogie coach and my new FR brake van. Which as it happens are both green. The hole in the 6mm ply (to be eventually hidden by some trees) required a bit of judicious expansion on the left hand side due to DKE issues (dynamic kinematic envelope) coming off the bend.


From underneath, you can see the U shaped trestle tops and the M10 joining bolts...

The new leg and the 6mm bolts.


The U shaped terminating blocks for the end of the hidden sidings hadn't been constructed to account for the 6mm ply, so these were removed and sorted by re-nailing them 6mm further apart.

Then I laid out the 7 pre-cut pieces of plasticard that are to go on the lower car park section to provide a flat base and make sure board joins are not as visible as they might be.

and finally, the first section was glued on with UHU - a tin of varnish and a hammer were used to weigh it down! I did this first section as a trial, as I can't be absolutely sure the UHU will work...Assuming it does work, I'll finish glueing these asap and then it's on to scenic formers, for which some serious research is necessary.

C

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