With the revised track arrangement in place and wired-up, I've been doing a lot of general tweaking, just to make sure all the levels are as spot-on as I can get them and that the transitions are nice and smooth.

Over the weekend I re-instated the trailing connection to the yard from the "up" line, so now the yard can be shunted from both directions. But the proof would be in the pudding, as both instances would require propelling moves, one across the slip, and the other around a bend. I was cautiously optimistic it would all work without mishaps, but I was glad to be able to shunt some test trains without any derailments or buffer-locking. My goods trains are made up of stock coupled using a mix of Spratt & Winkles and 3-links, and it's the latter that are most likely to cause trouble.

Here an up train pauses before continuing. To shunt the yard, it will run to the left, out of the visible scenery, through a ninety degree curve, into the Spring module, and then back up through a curved siding, formerly the head-shunt of the old yard. Any wagons can then be detached via magnets in the two sidings, one serving the goods shed and the other the cattle dock.

Thankfully all was well, with a nice mixture of rolling stock hopefully offering a typical train. I'm sure there'll be the odd mishap in operating sessions, but they'll be attended to as they happen, just as on the real railway!

A down train has to back over the single slip and into the yard via the 3-way. There's an uncoupling magnet on the main running line, so a train can be broken before the main shunting move, and then part of it left in the yard. Over the years I've rarely experienced any difficulties with having magnets on the main lines, since the inherent tension in a train tends to prevent unwanted uncoupling incidents. You just have to be careful not to stop with the couplings exactly over the magnet, unless you want to uncouple.

I like this low-angle and look forward to re-ballasting the track.

Thanks for reading!