Pleasure...

I spent most of Saturday playing trains. I intended to 'do some work' on the layout, but having built the sidings and got the double-slip working I just seemed to let the afternoon slip by shunting trains in and out. I can see I'm going to have fun trying to 'think like the real railway staff'. Things like trying to work out how the pick-up goods would have been marshalled to make shunting at each station more straightforward or see how you would swap empty and full wagons out of the coal siding and 'spot' vehicles in the yard at suitable positions for loading and unloading. Add to that the requirement to keep the main line as clear as possible for through services and extra 'operational requirements' such as trying to shunt without requiring the level crossing to be closed and you have great potential to lose a few hours.

Most things worked pretty well with issues generally tracked down to problems with specific pieces of rolling stock, back-to-backs and even wheels so covered in 'cack' that there wasn't much flange left.

So by way of penance on Sunday I decided to do something that was a pain!

I decided to try and fit some point rodding. Now I can't say much about the Brassmaster's etches because I was responsible for the original artwork. That does mean that I can't blame anyone else when they are fiddly, but at least they aren't designed for 'S' gauge like the new Wills ones. The hardest part though is trying to thread them on the square .5mm brass wire which has been coiled up tightly and has a mind of its own. Still I'm quite pleased with the results.

Working out the rodding routes meant trying to think like a signal engineer and find ways to getting the rodding between the sleepers. As I couldn't find a simple route through from the switch at the yard entrance direct to the main rodding run at the behind the loop this run goes to the front of line and then picks up the far end of the double slip. The switch at the near end of the slip would have been controlled by a hand lever but I think for ease of operation I'm probably going to use a lever in the frame just to avoid having 'an odd lever' on the front of the layout.

I thought fitting the rodding before painting the track and ballasting would probably be easier than trying to scrape away ballast to plant the rodding stools later.

Probably the scariest moment was spotting that I did the artwork for these in 1993. Boy does that seem a long time ago!

David