Extension

Today after mowing the back lawn and other various gardening jobs I found a couple of hours to work on the layout.  Thus the extension to the station board was attached.  The first photo shows the various brackets used to ensure strength. 2 L shaped ones at the sides, 3 smaller L’s along the top of the board and two long pieces across the underside joins.  Should be good enough!

Then I erected the board next door, clamped it together to the new extension and drilled the 10mm holes for the M10 bolts.  Finally I removed the ply top from the front couple of inches of the extension as this needs to sit lower down.  I then cut a piece of plywood to sit at the lower level (just like the adjacent board).  In the shots you can see a clamp being used whilst a piece of 2x1 is glued at 90 degrees to this new piece.  When dry it will be attached to the board which might be tomorrow. Then filler will be used to create the slope between the lower and rail level sections.

You might note that a couple of trees have suffered during transport from expoNG – no problem to correct though!

This now means that all is clear to sort out the alignment of the track here (which will of course include removing some track already laid.  It should be worth all this though as the extension is expected to help running considerably. 

Of course I’ll need to extend the hidden sidings too by the same amount, but I will wait and do this later prior to complete erection of the layout again.