One of the 'great things' about this hobby (unless you are incredibly clever in the Forward Planning Department) is that you learn lessons as you go along. Once you've made something, you find that you've left something else off it, or perhaps you should have built it in a different sequence or added some part earlier...

Thus it was with the cosmetic tiebars for Callow Lane. I had originally planned to use a Scalefour Society etch but this turned out to be designed for older-type flat bottom pointwork, and not really suitable for bullhead track at all.

I know that Masokits do a delicate etch, and Craigwelsh kindly showed me an example he had built up last weekend at Blackburn.

But, in the end, I decided to scratchbuild them from brass strip.

Having already built, laid, painted and ballasted the points, I found that adding the cosmetic tie bars would have been much easier at the construction phase, when the points were still easily worked on, on my workbench.

The actual operation of the five point ends on 'Callow Lane' is via under-board tie-bars, which connect to the blades above via nickel silver droppers. These are firmly soldered to the blades (don't want any coming adrift at exhibitions... ) and under the board, they slot into brass tubes, which in turn are epoxied into robust plastic tiebars made by the P4 Track Co. The whole lot is operated by Tortoise point motors.

Anyway, having previously spent some time setting the point blades up so that the motors threw them 'just so', I didn't want to have to undo that work again, so I opted to solder the cosmetic tie bars to the droppers. Or rather, to one individual dropper, so as not to set up any unnecessary strains when the points moved. The resulting soldered joint on one side only is perfectly adequate to hold the whole cosmetic tie bar in place. Not totally prototypical, but better than nothing and at 'normal viewing distances' you can at least see that 'there's something there'...

On this particular set of points, you can also see the balsa wood sleeper extensions that I've put on, to take the hand lever. I wonder if there's a market for the likes of the P4 Track Co to market longer bearers where handpoints are involved?