11th September 2021

OLE

Yesterday (writing this, on Sunday) I had a brief visit to see how things are coming along with the layout - getting to see the backscene board nicely in place, looking at where the OLE masts would be placed and what exact form they would take - PIC 4 shows roughly how it might look - having found some brackets a couple of years ago that ''might be'' adapted - siilar in overall resulting appearance to those seen at Chester's Making Tracks layout - but also ones with a variance of appearance, getting to see how Ian's ideas for the space of the fiddle yard would be best used - the thinking is that there may be room for a programming track on the add-on fiddle yard board - more on this to follow - as well as a few snaps from our discussion time - DB Blue and Multimodal had a brief sortie out on the layout as well - mini clips to follow. Unfortuantely, my phone died on this session and i had forgotten to take my charging lead with me :-(

For those who haven't seen this layout before, I am using nBrass portals with scratchbuilt cantilevers - inspired by those from the Chester Cathedral layout - as well as others seen at Crewe IEMD, unfortunately PECO's multi-track portals havent arrived in time. The single masts and terminating gantries will be based on PECOs single track masts - the catenary wire is all PECO.

Fiddle Yard

The track which is the entrance exit for the layout currently splits into three lines and myself and Ian are currently discussing how best to work an additional fiddle yard track which will come out from under the tunnel section, and potentially have two/three tracks, one being for programming and also two for preparing loco arrivals onto Johnson Street IEMD.