That last pic is SbridgeB.jpg and should be a above the craft room pic. Not sure what's happened, its OK on my pre-post copy!

Dave

Bit of a nasty joggle just past the crossover, Dave. Or perhaps the camera makes it look worse than it is?

Dave.

It's a funny thing wonky track work. One of my interests is industrial railways. I remember Iain Rice's track modelling advice in one of his books 'look at a good photo of your prototype track and model what you see'. I've found it more or less impossible to model track work with as many kinks, dog legs and dips as typical industrial track work. Check out NCB in South Wales - Dave's Honley Tank dog leg is modest by comparison. If that's not maintained to main running line standards then it's not unknown. Leave it in Dave, it has character!

Thanks both for your comments.
 
Dave,

no doubt because the picture ended up away from its words(see comment from me above), you missed my;
"   That apparent kink in the RH rail is not so apparent to the naked eye and certainly causes no running problems; - (the camera cannot lie!?!)."

 Ian,

As every thing seems to run perfectly, change is unlikely, but as it's supposed to be "hidden sidings", the "character" hardly matters!

Sorry, Dave, I hadn't spotted your comment further up the content. I suppose reliable running is what counts, so that degree of kink must be OK.

Regarding Ian's comments about the state of track geometry in industrial track, and sometimes in goods yards as well, I fully agree it could be very poor. However, I find in model terms, especially in P4/S4, it's hard enough to get stock to reliably stay on near perfect track so I fear realistically lumpy industrial type track might prove a challenge too far. Mind you, I believe derailments in goods yards were commonplace, if not daily occurrences, quickly sorted out at local level with timbers, jacks, etc., without recourse to higher management. WD 2-8-0 tenders were particularly prone to leaping off dodgy track unless well filled with water, mainly due to seizure of the compensating beams linking the inner ends of the leaf springs.

We don't want to replicate that, do we?

You're quite correct Dave; there were many more yard and minor line derailments than the management were often kept aware of.

However, even if our track construction is so good, that we have the number of derailments "just like the real thing" had then we all consider it to be too many.

My track building and laying skills are even worse than my loco building skills. Years ago I used to take my newly finished locos to Dean Hall for testing because they always ran better on the P4 layout there, than they did on my home layout.

I work on the principle that derailments due to poor driving, like approaching an incorrectly set turn-out, or excessive speed, will always occur. Derailment of my locos and stock, which can be blamed on poor track work, I accept. But derailment due to poor loco/stock building must be seen as totally unacceptable.

EM is less forgiving than OO in these respects and P4/S4 is even less forgiving; but we should not be building locos or rolling stock that will forgive poor track; the answer must be to improve the track.

'Birch Vale' was re-railed with track to S4 standards after I had built 'Bowton's Yard' and the track on BV has benifited from the experience with Bowton's.

Currently, locos and stock which run perfectly (well nearly!) on BV don't run so well on Bowton's.

The answer is that I should re-rail Bowton's !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dave