I thought rather than talking about the stock for the moment, I would instead talk a bit more about the layout itself.

As can been seen in my first blog I designed the trackplan on XtrkCAD, this went through several alterations including a complete redesign until what is seen today. Unfortunatly I didn't keep the other trackplans but I do remeber there was one based loosely on the Rev W. Awdry's Ffarquhar Mk II layout as I was intending to run my Thomas and Friends stock on it as well as my LNER stock.

The decison to go DCC changed all that though as I didn't really want to chip all my Thomas stock as it mainly is from the Bachmann American range (they closely resemble the T.V series of which I grew up with), which as they don't have DCC provison on board mean't I would have had to hard wire all the decoders and find space for them( Anyone who has opened a Bachmann Thomas can atest to there not being much room apart from the cabs on the tank engines! don't even get me started on the tender engines!!!).

Anyway back to the layout, The boards are a standard flat top with beams to support underneath and

once I was 100% happy with it the trackplan was printed out and copydex'd straight on to the 12mm thick MDF baseboards. Now I don't even pretend to be carpenter but I could lay on those boards and not get a single creak, In fact I may have over engineered them!

Once the neat Copydex had dried I cut and in the loco yard, goods yard and station area laid 3mm cork on top of that, shouldered cork was laid on the actual branchline leading to the fiddleyard so that a good ballast shoulder could be obtained with ease.

Once the copydex had dried another print out form XtrkCAD was laid on top again using Copydex. I use copydex to stick everything down including track and ballast as it dries to a rubber which makes a surprising difference to sound deading (knocking on the plain MDF top and then the cork there was a very noticeable drop in sound!)

Starting in the fiddleyard with Peco code 100 flexitrack and electrofrog turn outs I put dropper wires from every piece of track except the turnouts, this was so it could be ready to be attached to the Copperstrip bus underneath. Once the Copydex had dried on the freshly laiden track the fiddleyard was turned over and the easy job of soldering the droppers to the bus started. Once this was completed the board was turned over and throughly tested to ensure everything worked.

Iit was at this point that the 3-way turnout used at the throat of the fiddleyard was found out to be causing the Bachmann Dynamis to short so requested some help on RMweb and tried out the alterations that were suggested and still found it was shorting.

I was quite disheartened at this point so, I ripped out the 3-way and replaced it with 2 turnouts which have given trouble free running (when I say trouble free I mean non human trouble free running, I used to keep forgetting to set the turnouts!).

At the throat of the fiddleyard the track changed to Peco Code 75, thank god for Peco trackage system for being universal! At the baseboard join between the scenery boards and fiddleyard the track sleepers were replaced with PCB sleepers and soldered to the track. As I had built the boards in a modular fashion this was a area that would get a few knocks if I ever needed to transport the layout anywhere. I am quite happy at the ridgity of the joins as this was my first attempt at doing something like this.

As with the fiddleyard all the track had droppers added before copydexing down on the board as I could solder to the underside and not have any wires showing on the sides (which is quite the bug bear for me).

As laying turnouts I drilled holes in the baseboard directly underneath the tiebar so I could fit motors at a later date (which still have to be done four years later!!!). Again as with the fiddleyard, once all the track was laid and dried and droppers soldered mass testing began.

Next step after testing: Painting and Ballasting.The Whole of the track apart for the fiddleyard was sprayed with Railmatch Sleeper Grime and once dry the railheads were cleaned using a Gaugemaster Track Cleaning block (the old style one not the newer smaller one).

Now I don't mind ballasting but as with any model railway job I need to be in the right mood to do it, it took a month to get in that mood also the chance to play trains was proving too much and after all I am easily distracted....

Lucky for me there isn't mich running line for tidy ballast so it only took me a couple of short sessions to ballast the single track and loop. Once satisified I used Diluted copydex (50/50 with water and a drop of washing up liquid) to secure in place. As you can probably tell by now I'm a big advocate of Copydex, it really is wonderful stuff! Instead of using Granite ballast I used Jarvis Senics fine Brown ballast which actually looks quite good once sprayed lighty with Railmatch Sleeper Grime and Track Dirt!

After normal ballasting I could then work on the yard areas, for this I originally used Carrs Ash ballast but I didn't find this realistic enough when in situ so when at Peterborourgh Festival of Railway Modelling one year I spotted on one of the stands real locomotive ash and purchased it for the mighty sum of £1.99. this was sprinkled on top of the Carrs ballast and rubbed in slightly which looked quite good so I put more on and this was the result (not the wagon this is the only picture I can find that shows the ash ballast up close!):

Once all that had dried (after being copydex'd!) I painted the rails a dark brown acrylic using a rusty rails painting tool which is an extremly useful tool and I highly recommend it to everyone.

That about wraps this blog up for construction and track laying, I will do a blog about some scenic work soon but I must admit I haven't done much of that at this time!

Happy Modelling!!!