After that exciting Broken River prototype flyby in my last post, let's now return to 6 inches x 8 feet of sky-high reality.
Checking aroundabout where the Broken River left-end track should go to meet up with the yard points, I de-lifted the section down onto a set of drawers so that I could do some work on it.
The first item to be addressed was the join between the backscene panels, which are plywood sheets approx 4mm thick. I white-glued a small piece of the same material behind them and clamped this all together while it sets. I also ran some white glue down the join as a filler between the two pieces, although I expect that area of the backscene will be largely hidden by the middle tunnel in my group of three.
Recycled flextrack was then attached with the staplecannon and a few wagons were pushed over the joins to make sure everything was smooth. Being too lazy or incompetent to make my own track (and lets face it, for a layout at this height, why would I bother!) I cut the rails with pliers and then file any burrs off the tops, bottoms and the surfaces where the fishplates go (otherwise you end up fighting with them and don't get a great join). As I happen to be using code 55 Peco track - the one that has 'two webs'; the latter step means running a triangular file between the webs on each side of each rail.
I'm soldering about every second rail jointer (mainly because most of my old recycled track is two sections soldered together) and will be running copious wire jumpers to connect everything else to a thick bus wire running around the layout. Don't want things to be running erratically up in the sky.
DJ 3067 and DG 2376 run the first (unpowered, non-revenue) train of crusty old wagons to 'see how things will look'
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