SALTNEY, E.T.* has gone homeâ€¦

Entry posted by Jon Fitness July 8, 2011

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Yes, I know I said that the last entry was going to be the last but I couldnâ€™t face starting a thread from scratchâ€¦

We reached at that time, what Steve called â€œthe crest of a slumpâ€.

Astley Bridge station was all but complete, and everything else was just ticking over. There were a few bits of the layout that all of us liked and a similar few that most of us didnâ€™t, there was too much stock, not enough operational flexibility and too many other distractions. It seemed we had lost a bit of impetus to work on the layout and we just ended up meeting and drinking tea.

Steve decided that the down-hill incline from Uppermill Station was just too steep and was making the locos run badly.

I was never happy with the ET* between the two junctions as it covered up too much of the main lines. Half of the main lines are already under cover where the storage loops are and it just dominated one end of the layout.

I arrived one day to see several rubbish sacks outside the door, containing said hill and was greeted with an empty space on the layout where it once stood.

Steve had decided to re- arrange the junction up to upper mill, reducing it to single line, removing the down-hill line and to do this entailed removing the hill to lay a crossover. The two mainline junctions then gained a bi-directional link line so that now we can run between the 2 terminii without stopping traffic on the mainlines. The old lead to the downhill line now heads off to 2 long sidings via a double slip, thereby curing 3 problems in one massive re-modelling session.

No more steep gradient, a massive improvement in operational flexibility and that huge ET* removed giving more â€œviewabilityâ€ (is that a real word?) to the layout

Steve was in charge of the track alterations and to replace the ET* and retain the physical/scenic break between the 2 junctions, a new stone bridge is being built, both on the slant and on the skew.