I think it was Monday this week that I went to the local hobby shop. I picked up two Tillig crossovers (standard to narrow gauge) as I thought if I don’t buy them now they will be dearer when I do get around to buying them. I was also looking at picking up some narrow gauge cross overs that I need for my storage yard out the back of the layout. There were none in the shop on the racks. But while walking around the shop, on top of a cabinet I found two 12mm crossovers. No doubt someone was going to buy them and then saw some TT gauge track and bought them instead and left the Peco 12mm crossings on the cabinet. So I bought them as well. So my boarding of items for the future exhibition layout has begun.
On Tuesday evening we all got online with the Tuesday Nighters and I showed off some historical photos from my future layout location. I think I had everyone’s interest. It was amazing that some photos showed that there were three standard gauge locos in the sidings, and there were plenty of narrow gauge locos on both Up and Down tracks, running wrong road and also in the sidings and on the branch as well. I think this layout is going to turn heads. Well, isn’t every layout owner hoping to do that with their exhibition layout? I just need approval from the financial controller. I might have to sell my left one in order to gain approval.
On late Wednesday morning I drove to PK’s and picked up his dual gauge Fast Track jigs. I also picked up four lengths of code 75 rail. Upon return home after 1:00pm and then having some lunch, I got stuck into building a set of dual gauge points. By the late afternoon, I had completed the first dual gauge set of points for the standard gauge tracks to branch from the dual gauge to the sidings. Initial testing has everything working well. I plan on visiting PK again to return the jigs, but also use his silver solder on my point’s actuation bar, so it is currently unsoldered on this dual gauge point. On Wednesday evening I cut up the PC board sleepers and some lengths of rail, so that on Thursday morning I could build another set of points, well actually it was a splitter piece of track where the two gauges, standard and narrow, will merge for a siding under a gantry crane. This also turned out pretty good. Initial testing has it working well. It has no moving point blades.
My intention is to actually have a travelling crane on the future exhibition layout location that will move up and down the siding. I was thinking that I need to build myself some 12mm catch points, one for the siding, and one for the branch line, given that these are not commercially available. So I built these either side of dinner. I then half built two 16.5mm (HO) catch points, but I ran out of code 75 rail. I had a scout around the shed as I thought I had a length somewhere. I found some small off cut lengths of Peco 12mm track, that I used to finish the build of the 16.5mm catch points. One of the pieces of rail that I found, was weathered rail. Boy, did that cause me some issues with soldering it to my PC board sleepers. So I removed the weathered rail and replaced it with another length of unweathered code 75 rail. I was quite happy again with how these four pieces of track turned out. The collection of track for the new layouts continues to accrue.
Eventually I will need to schedule another trip over to the other side of the world to get about four more lengths of code 75 rail from PK. These will be put aside for the rails needed for the travelling crane or should I say travelling cranes, to run on as there are actually two on that track in the prototype’s yard.
I did some stocktaking of track components and worked out what types and how many I need of the various sets of points in 16.5mm and 12mm gauges. I hope to get my first drawdown from the boss and go looking for points and narrow gauge track at next Sunday’s Buy and Sell in Brisbane.
Today really early, my son’s mates all rocked up at 6:35am, before they took off on a road trip to Canberra and then Melbourne and back over the next week. But it was revealed to them by another of my son’s mates that I had a Shed in the back yard full of trains and they all want to view the layout before they hit the road. They were enlightened and slightly overawed, I think. But they needed to not spend too much time there as they needed to hit the road in their convoy travelling south in order to get to Canberra tonight.
Just before lunch today I finally bit the bullet and continued on working on the supports for the trackwork from Rocklea Siding to Sunnybank Station. I installed about 5 supports and joined all the 12mm track up. So things are progressing. I will be looking at installing power to this section of track in the coming week and I hope to have trains operating under their own power before next weekend.
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