That looks very promising! I'll be interested in your experience of Unitrack.

3 hours ago, Ian Simpson said:

That looks very promising! I'll be interested in your experience of Unitrack.

I bought an oval of Unitrack a few years ago to let me run my APT-E up to speed. Later I used some of the track to make a temporary extension to the railway and it worked fine; and later I bought a couple of turnouts.

I think Unitrack is great. Running is very good indeed - as though Kato have chosen just the right grade of nickel silver. Soldering to the rail is easy too, although I would imagine this is not a design feature.

The turnouts work well - I have two sprung turnouts with manual operation. The turnouts have huge dead sections (plastic frogs) but all of my stock runs fine except where the wheelbase is shorter than the frog. The implication is, the rail tops are flat throughout these turnouts.

The major downside is, of course, there is no flexi track. You can make quite passable-looking formations of turnouts, but the trackwork cannot "flow" at it can with flexi.

The dimensions and spacing of the sleepers seem to be spot-on for British practice in 1:87 scale :-)

On 02/11/2020 at 21:30, richbrummitt said:

I like the look of those train tubes, but not so much the prices!

I actually started by buying one for my Rapido APT-E and liked the tube so much I bought two more and a wall bracket, and then another three and another wall bracket. I have no regrets - they hang on the wall with a nice contemporary look and I never have to touch the models.

I subscribed to the TrainSafe newsletter and they do a 10% discount from time to time. I'd like another three to finish filling my wall :-)

I have started the build of Wellwood with an open-top baseboard:

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/167222-wellwood/

This has let me break up this prototype and the dustmen have carried it away today. I do think, a flush door would make a good baseboard as long as you don't have many wires or point linkages to install underneath. Minor dropped areas e.g. ponds would be possible by cutting away one skin and scooping out the cardboard inner.