Studholme 8 - All together now...

 DB continues:

Buoyed by the success of last night's bracing post, I went down to Mitre 10 and bought some 50mm M6 bolts and wing nuts and an assortment of washers, which let me complete the module's two legs with their fold-in braces. These braces are screwed to the legs at one end (with a bigger hole in one of the two bits of wood for some swivel) and M6-bolted to a little tab on the module at the other end. The braces are all made from the same 18mm square 1.2m long sticks that were procured from Bunnings for legs and braces when this all started.

This enabled me to sit the Centre module on its legs for the first time, with feelings of joy and a sense of pride that I expect a father feels when their first child takes its first steps. 

Like that child, the module was a little wobbly. Perhaps a little too wobbly for my liking, but at least it didn't fall on its face, throw up or poop itself. 

This wobbliness likely stems from the braces being relatively short. So a new plan was hatched: detachable longer leg brace sticks that can be stored within the module. So I decided to add the longest brace that would fit (diagonally) under the module 'lid' of the South module, with the module legs folding up to keep the brace in place during transit. This brace would be bolted with M6s and wingnuts at both ends.

This was proceeding to plan rather swimmingly, all too good to be true when it dawned on me that (six months ago) I'd put this South module's leg at the inboard end of the module, where it would mate up with the centre one with its two leg sets and leaving none at the outer end where support was needed!! D'oh! And I'd made a really nice job of this one too - better than the funky North module leg. Maybe this was supposed to be the module with two leg sets and not the Center one.....

So the wooden dowel pivots were knocked out - always use the correct tool (as above, "dear, where's the hammer?"), the leg was repositioned to the correct 'outer' end, and the brace added. 

This single brace felt a lot stiffer than the twin wee braces on the middle section. So now for the acid test... the South module was plugged into the Centre module. 

More pride and joy! So much so that I decided to reattach the legs of the North module (which I'd never been that happy with, but hey, they work) and put a similar long detachable brace on it, wingnutted at both ends. 

Ooooo. Finally, Studholme is back together again, and with those two long braces on the ends, it's actually pretty solid. The two end modules with their single leg sets are nice and light too. It all looks a little skewiff in the picture above, but the adjustable feet at the ends of the legs have since been wound in and out to level things up.

As an aside, I remeasured the length of the three passing loops - they should be able to hold a 2.1m train each. That sounds like a lot until I went inside to measure a pair of DXs and some bogie coal wagons. That is a 15 wagon train plus two locos. Maybe 16. 

Which again, sounds fine, but I already have a few more bogie coal wagons than that, with bits for another six. C'est la vie, whatever that means. If this ever sees any action at a show, and if it turns out to be a little short for the trains that want to be run, a medium length four track section could be added later on between the Centre and North modules.