Back to base again without the layout which is in transit to our next exhibition appearance at the London Festival of Railway Modelling at Alexandra Palace on 23 and 24 March. Keith and Alan took the opportunity to check the baseboards for their Somerset and Dorset layout. As this has a large footprint (see December 2018 blog entry), the large flat area of the church hall floor is ideal for checking it all fits together. We also discussed improvements to the DG couplings on Lightermans Yard rolling stock, and ways to improve making the units and the reliability of the un-coupling magnets throughout the layout.
Pete K's T-shirt perfectly summed up our thoughts.
Keith and Alan assembling the baseboard units.
Both ends of the layout connected to the fiddle yard.
Not yet built, the baseboards for scenic part of the layout will join across the front of the two circles and fiddle yard from the wide shape in the foreground - linking to the mirror shape on the opposite side.
Below an experiment for the fiddle yard point work, soldering flat-bottom
track to PCB board and electrically separating as necessary.
The meeting continued with a discussion on standardising DG couplings. Alan S demonstrated a loop making jig to manufacture identical elements of the couplers. The manufactured loop on a van.
From David Smith, nine goods wagons and vans to join Lightermans stock
Locomotive of the month is progress on David Smith's scratch built South Eastern Railway 0-6-0 R1. When finished it will join the shunting roster on Lightermans Yard.
See you at Ally Pally
Those baseboards area work of art, Evercreech is going to be a stunning layout.
ReplyDeleteJerry