I recently reported that I was carrying out general maintenance on my three layouts while the ambient temperature allowed working in the layout room (garage!), but suddenly total madness came over me and I decided that the hidden siding at the Guidebridge end of Bowton's Yard needed modification.

It started life as a single siding, which led to a lot of "fiddling". Some time ago a turn-out was added so as to give two roads, but in order to get a reasonable train capacity in this new road the point was an A5. Much too tight for my larger engines, and indeed for two smaller tender engines with correctly spaced loco-to-tender drag bars.

This caused so many problems that some form of modification was much needed. After a measuring session I decided that it was possible to have this baseboard twice as wide as the original. Also I decided that a cassette system would allow a more acceptable train length and if I had loco cassettes and train cassettes there would be a big reduction in stock handling.

I'm afraid that my past experience with various makes of flexi-track has not been good; - they always seem eventually to go under-gauge and with my insistence on a near S4 back-to-back, I get unacceptably frequent problems. This is a hidden siding, so copper laminate track was decided on.

Hence "Madness"! With Manchester's exhibition fast approaching (first W/E in December at UMIST) and my C13s and row of terraced houses still needing an awful lot of work for the competition, I decide on a virtual new layout. A brand new baseboard; five train cassettes; five loco cassettes and about eight meters of track to solder up. There will also be the electrics and some modification to the feeder baseboard and its tracks. The following pics show the current chaos.

Dave