Back from the dead... Broken River Quickie

DB Says:

Did I miss much while I was away?

Something strange happened over the weekend. It started with us deciding to replace the takeout-food-stained carpet in the TV room and the sickly green carpet in the main bedroom and the train room.

This would mean having to actually clean up the train room which (as you may have noticed) for the past year has been barely enter-able. Which I duly did.

Holy crap! It's clean! Love that carpet.

And while I'm moving out all those lengths of wood, wouldn't it be an idea to throw one of them up along the wall and bung some track down onto it? Then we might actually be able to run a few trains around in the near future.

So I duly screwed some of this to some of that to add strength and height, and cut some thin backboard in half and screwed that in and put some brackets up. Thanks to the power of mechanised drills and saws, I had assembled and installed this lump of instalayout foundation in about 10 minutes.


The last two shots are from standing height level and illustrate the benefit of having a stepped baseboard to lift the trains up a little. I have some spare thin backboard, so I might make a taller one to replace this one which is only about 10 inches high overall.

Not bad for a minimal effort!

On tour; Northwards

Well, its been quiet-ish this week as the Schloss Dandruff household has been on tour to areas north, and more precisely where the locals seem to like their hillside's smoking and egg sandwiches (judging from the smell).

'Would you like your hillside smoking or non-smoking'

On the way back south we detoured round the back of the mountains. I'd just like to comment that unlike the South Island, where mountains really know how to be mountains, the ones up here couldn't really seem to be bothered.

At Tangawi, the lady of the house spotted a train, and even more, I was allowed to stop and take a photograph.

Further south of Waiouru I stopped again. While waiting I took this shot of one of the overhead tensioning poles.

'Just cos its interesting'

This photo shows that Its very hard with an old style digital camera to take good photos.

'It's just push the button and hope really'

Following the train further south with cries of 'We're train chasing, baby' were met with looks from the passenger seat normally reserved for errant socks in the living room.

Starting the scenic modeling.

Well, with the track all but done (and admittedly, that turntable is a pretty big 'but') its time to look at some of the small scenes that I can start working on to get back into the scenery side of things. Another consideration is that the terra forming arts have taken a few leaps forward while I've been off playing with toy soldiers, so I've got a few things to catch up on. Apparently sanded pinex spray painted with a light brown colour no longer cuts it.

So, first area to be selected is the loco depot water tank and surrounds. This had a couple of grounded wagon bodies and a collection of oil drums lying round. I have cut out the foam rubber at this site and will be cutting out a piece of MDF so that I can work on the detailing away from the layout at the bench.


The van body is supposed to be an Xa, but I have yet to make any of those just yet, so for the moment the W will have to do.

How not to do it

Dragging heavy wagons round tight corners doesn't work very well, especially if you speed up to quickly.


The modeler should have done a better job attaching the bogies as well.

Now with improved light

The photos of the layout re-taken during the day so you can actually see what is going on.




Thats a bit better

Trackmaking XXXV; Is that it?

Yesterday afternoon I sat down, added the tie bars and completed gaping the PCB sleepers. I then placed the points in place on the 3rd modules to see what they looked like.

Looking at the module I decided something was still missing. The space for the turntable will stay for a while, but the tracks through the loco shed are quite glaring in their absence. A quick 25 minutes with the tools and the problem was solved.


Apart from the turntable and some short pieces at the end of sidings, that's actually about it track wise. Not sure I'll be able to go cold turkey from it, so I may have to do some other small projects to wean myself off.

So, what does the layout look like at the moment. Here is the picture from the north end looking down the length of the station.

And looking from the south end.

'Yes, I have been playing trains'

Saturday morning

Which is in danger of become the only blog post during the week.

This afternoon should see the completion of the last 2 points for the layout. This then leads to the largest stumbling block left at the moment which is the turntable pit. I'm not sure how deep the 70' pits were, but my guesstimate's would put it at about 4' give or take a bit. This should be able to be cut out of 5mm plywood using some modern technology thingy, and 2 layers will be about right with a bottom sheet to mount the mechanism. All contractors interested can tender to me by E-mail. (UPDATE. hang on, just found a plan for one on the hard drive collection)

Apart from that, there is a vague sort of feeling that I should be getting back into making some wagons. I need to do some for the Fell loco museum layout before I start getting visits from men in black suits carrying baseball bats. There are some thoughts lurking in the back of my brain about buying some more rubber and resin to do some casting. There is also the seriously stalled Ew project which I've been re looking at. I may have found as new way forward with the mechanism which I'm happier with, but will need to spend some time on it.

Apart from that, I've got nothing. feel free to talk amongst yourselves, or go and do some modeling.