24th August

Having seen my layout recently has really given me the taste for getting it finished soon, it sorted as it's becoming like the never ending story, well, fortunately, with little things going in the background, hopefully, it will nearly be sorted, I have  the next DB 90 coming along in a paint shop far far away - and also the gantries designed to carry the 25kv wires, today,  several of the flat pack gantries arrived from Nbrass - their gantries are the nearest thing we have to perfection out there for intricate representation - with a bit of jiggery pokery, i'll soon have a mix of two, three and four track gantries which span across the depot scene as well as the more well known PECO single track masts - so, i hear some say what are NBrass, they do OO and N gauge catenary amongst other things - their catenary comes flatpacked and you have to make it up using a soldering iron plus a widget type thing they give you to assist making the oblong structures. 

I also have one or two gantries for the terminating wires to be taken away at the ends of sidings - a bit of a gaff by the makers of model OHLE maybe - all overhead lines must run to somewhere, right?, what about sidings, most layouts have them, right? well, Johnson Street has the three sidings at the end of the shed - which also takes overhead wires into it - the two tracks to the left - the holding pen sidings as well as the head shunt electrification and also the shed loco siding, all of which will have terminating overhead wires into single or multiple end masts. Studying the existence of these across the network has been part of my research planning into the wheres and whatfors of this layout and the occasional visist to railway stations on the WCML like Manchester picadilly which has a number of electrified teminating tracks - Stafford also has a siding which is electrified and the Network rail base in South Stafford has one siding which is electrified also, so lots of food for thought there.