Looking at Point Building

This week has been quite busy at work. I did have Tuesday Night with the crew at Bob’s Place. I had PK come to my place, and then we picked up Barry and Lefty, and went to Bobs. We were also supposed to pick up Shelton, but he piked as he wanted to take a video of MB4 the next morning with its new PN 91 class locos being tested. As it turned out that train ran pretty late, so Shelton could have got both his beauty sleep and the video if he had come to Tuesday Nighters.

 

On Tuesday night, I was asking the guys what the best way to scratch build points?  I wanted to know what to use as a base. I know Old Mike has built quite a few and they look and work reasonably well. Mike uses a geometry much like Peco medium radius and uses code 100. Geoff has scratch built NSWGR points from plans in the Greg Edwards' Track Work Manual and these are also built to finer tolerances and also look immaculate. These are made in code 80. Now we have PK scratch building in N scale. He uses code 55 track and I saw a few of these on the N scale exhibition layout for our Club on Saturday and they also look perfect. One of our other Club members who has attended a few Running Sessions on Cassino - Rob - scratch builds his N scale point in Code 40.  These have to be seen to be believed.  I will use plain old code 100 track. But mine will be dual gauge. The gurus suggested that I use a cork base to push my drawing pins into to hold the track and PC board etc. I have put two 6mm floor tiles together as my base. I think I might use a styrene jig to position the PC board sleepers, until I solder the two stock rails to them as it all begins to come together into a solid base.

 

So I am gathering my bits and pieces on the Dining Room table and over the next few weeks I will do some preparation bit by bit towards the milestone of the first point being constructed. I have some doubts as to how good they will turn out, but I will give it a try.  I have some Parent-Teacher sessions this week, and I will be evaluating a tender at work for the next 2 weeks at least, so I don’t think I will get much done at night over this period.

 

Yesterday we went to the Club for the normal meeting day. The main reason was to decide on some design points for the new HO clubroom layout. Everyone agreed to the proposals put forward so the mid-week workers will probably get stuck into doing some frame work L-Girder construction.  While at the Club, I picked up 7 kits for storage trays for a mate, and a number of decoders to be fitted to a few locos that I either have ready to install decoders into at home or ones that I'm about to get this week.

 

Today I got down into the shed and lowered the new top deck above Kyogle by about 5cm. Now the decks are reasonably close and it is quite dark around Kyogle now.  What I do need is some form of lighting under this deck - LED maybe?  That should make this deck visible again as it looks like it is after sunset at the moment. 

 

I did not get to Bunnings to buy my additional Pine requirements this weekend, but everything is still on track for completion of theis level of baseboard in a few weeks. My activities today were somewhat hampered by having to mow the jungle, do the edges and pull some weeds out of the side garden.  Then of course there was the cricket on TV.

 

See ya next week.