Druff & Co tracklayers; no job too odd

How do I get myself talked into these things....

Recently after delivery of a batch of J sheep wagon etches, the question of 'how much' was broached.
'Oh, just whatever' came the reply, not realising that 'whatever' is really not what it use to be (the entire whatever market having suffered a serious crash a few years back which killed the driver outright).

Fast forward a few months, and While his children were merrily redecorating the floor of our house with Pizza, Am Fet (I wonder if he will eventually become an acronym, and if so, will Alec Fenton be impressed?) looked covetously at my modules and commented 'that track looks nice..'.

A few hints and a track plan of somewhere called Grassmere (I'm sure I've been there and stood in the lake, but I recall I was in England at the time, and I can't remember seeing any piles of salt, just fat lost poms wandering round with GPS units) and I figured that he might actually want something built.

The first step was to actually agree on just what was wanted, and several iterations of plans were sent and rejected until I realised I was being sent the same plan several times over, despite my misgivings. Ah well, I wasn't going to have to operate it, so it was time to start. Fortunately a parcel from Woodsworks had arrived and I had enough rail to start work.

The first step was to translate the track plan into something that I could work with. Fortunately I had received a copy of the actually track layout and could then toss the 3rd planit rubbish away.

'Working with computer packages is just Soo restricting'

This is what the plan actually shows.


The important parts of the arrangement are the 2 points face to face, and the back line not quite parallel with the front line at the packaging plant. The back line also has to be straight for at least the length of a modern wagon (however many millimeters that is, but I think about 6" in a real measurement). Armed with this the trusty drafts people sat down and drew the area out full sized, with all the track radii marked in. Due to local planning constraints (something about the layout living on the top of a cupboard in the kitchen I think) the track layout had been somewhat optimistic, and so I was forced to use what I consider to be an absolute minimum radius of 600mm


The next step was to place all the sleepers in position with the aid of double sided tape. Once this was done tracklaying could start in earnest.


Tracklaying proceeded using my usual methods. I must translate these into something everyone else can use at some point.


The first step really is to get all the outer tracks in place, which then locates the frogs. I'm going to have a chat with the local Gurus as the frog areas are still not working out as well as I had hoped that they would, and I need a second pair of eyes (or 3rd and 4th as there will be optivisors involved). However they worked fine and a test bogie ran throught them without the checkrails installed.


And finally the finished product. The throwbars are not straight (I might go back and fix the worst offender tonight) but it's all there, and I just have to go through and gap all the rails now, as well as clean up some of the soldering mess. I just hope that that chap Cabbage doesn't look at it too closely. He won't be impressed....
(Its not bad for 3 evenings work, and the total cost of materials is about $10. Building something thats going to live on top of a cupboard in the kitchen, priceless..no wait hang on a minute...)