Getting back to Worseter
Entry posted by Killybegs
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Now that I have officially retired, I have more time on my hands to get back to work on Worseter, my roundy roundy layout. The fiddle yards have been in storage mode for nearly ten years while I concentrated on getting Clinkerford finished and building stock for the layout. The fiddle yard is on three boards which are hinged at the rear to allow them to be folded up out of the way against the wall. Now that Clinkerford has moved on to pastures new, the boards have been lowered to operating level on a permanent basis and bolted securely together and to one end of the layout (the other end is connected by a 'bridge' across the doorway). Over the years some differential movement had taken place between the boards leading to tracks being slightly misaligned. The gaps between the ends of rails were also too much for my liking, so short sections on each board were cut out and replaced with a single length of track. The connection to the layout was even more critical as the tracks are on a 1200mm radius. These utilise timber sleepers with C&L rail and chairs, to facilitate gauge widening, whereas the fiddle yard uses preformed track. I left the timber sleepers in place, removing only the rail and chairs. New lengths of rail and chairs were then laid. I also took the opportunity to level up the trackbed which had settled a little over the years. It was very satisfying to dust off and connect up the control panel and find that nearly everything was srill working (once the rust had been removed from the top of the rails - one drawback of steel rails when you live close to the sea!), just one dodgy microswitch on a Tortoise point motor. Soon sorted with a bit of use. Interesting that only one board had a couple of loose droppers.
I have to modify the bridge across the door before I can achieve continuous running again and the whole low level section of the layout which includes an MPD, factory and wharehouses has yet to be started!
The pics below show the join between two of the boards during and after track modifications. The final pic shows Totnes Castle being turned on one of the two fiddle yard turntables. I believe in turning locos, not trains, just like real life! Locos are detatched and turned if appropriate before running round their train. Once the MPD is built they might even go on shed!
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