Trackwork continues and a special birthday
Entry posted by craigwelsh
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Short progress update here on what we've been up to in the last week.
Dick delivered the complex obtuse bit at the heart of the slip that allows access into the goods yard at the toe end of the double junction. Ralph can now combine this with this crossings to produce the finished article. As the layout has a gentle curve to it there is no straight track to this slip! Once this is complete all the mainline pointwork on the front scenic boards for the layout are complete although extra points will be needed on the inner lines leaving the junction. We intend on finishing a running loop of the outer lines before tackling these however.
I've been working on a test piece to deal with the transitions we have between ply pointwork and plastic straight track. At other parts of the layout there will need to be a slight gradient to link into the fiddle yard but this test track covers the discrepancies at the front. 0.8mm balsa is used to pack the ply track up to the level of the plastic sleepers and I believe the exercise has been a success. Next however I need to test how it all looks weathered and ballasted. As it was made up from oddments please ignore the sleeper sizes and spacings! There is also Fasttrack included which doesn't feature on the actual layout but it made up a decent length and I want to see how the exaggerated grain effect covers up when painted.
On Friday 13th November Slattocks played witness to the surprise 90th birthday party for Sid Stubbs, president of the MMRS and a true pioneer of finescale. He has been modelling in finescale for over 70 years and is still modelling in the original EM gauge of 18mm while making his own motors and making wheels and buffers etc on his lathe. If anyone is unfamiliar with Sid Stubbs there is an article on him in MRJ http://www.modelrail...issue.php?s=177 , his work also features in other editions if you search for him via the index. He is quite a character actually and your never sure when he'll turn up at the club (it was certainly a worry when someone went to get him on Friday!), reminds me of Yoda in many ways for anyone who's seen Star Wars 
. He also makes an interesting concoction if home brew so i'm told...
This picture was signed by the artist.
The event was well attended by club membership with many attendees shown in the following shots.
Hopefully there will be further such celebrations in the future when Slattocks will have trains running on it instead of cans of beer and a row of cards 
.
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