barrowroad's Blog

Robin,

 

The track-work is beginning to look very nice indeed - lovely flowing curve down the main line and through the points. It looks like you've got a rather interesting base-board joint running through on of the points - it looks to pass through one of the sleepers at a fine angle (I avoided this on Delph by having staggered joints which pass entirely between sleepers across all 7 tracks, even though the joints aren't necessarily square to the track.)

I'm also intrigued that you are dying the wooden sleepers and look forward to seeing how you match the appearance with painting the plastic flexi-track. I've just started to paint the track on Delph and have followed Ian Rice's recommendation to first paint everything with grey primer (I've used Halford's plastic primer) to give a common base colour and texture to both ply and plastic sleepers, prior to applying the actual sleeper colour (although I'm not really sure what colour this should be!!! - I'd welcome you suggestions on this.).

As you say, fitting cosmetic chairs is a real pain. I found it necessary to grind away the whole of the rivet head outboard of the rail in order to get the chair halves to fit into the rail properly. Sounds like you've had a similar experience. I'm sure the original plastic chairs were moulded with a recess underneath that was big enought to fir over the rivets but both C&L and P4 Track Co current products don't fit without a lot of work.

 

Looking forward to seeing continuing progress. The onset of track laying is transforming the layout - superb as the building are in their own right.

 

Cheers,

 

Dave.

Hi Dave,

 

I'm interested in how I am going to match the flexitrack as well

Craig [Welsh on this list] came round a few days ago and we had a chat about progress with the track on Slattocks. What concerned me was his comments about painting C&L flexitrack - he told me they had problems with paint lifting and nothing seemed to adhere to it. I haven't done any experiments yet but have decided to relay the mainline with ply sleepers so I get consistent colouring. I think I will lay the yard with flexitrack if the paint adheres to it. At least most of the yard will be covered with grime and gunge!

 

Craig told me that they had painted their track with Humbrol enamels Nos 53 + 62 with copious white spirit to avoid dense pigment. I've not tried this yet.

 

Yes the cosmetic chairs are a pain - I have choosen to file the inside of the C&L chairs rather than grind the rivets. I cut them in half and hold each half in a pair of tweezers whilst filing them rear with a round file. I can them push them over the rivet after applying the solvent. I changed to Plastiweld from Butanone to avoid the fumes.

 

I shall be in Scotland for the next week so will not be able to respond until afterwards.

 

BTW Morgan Paul & I will be at the Leamington show in January with part of the layout on behalf of the Scalefour Society - come and visit us.

 

 

Cheers,

 

 

Robin

Robin,

 

I've posted 3 photos on "Delph" showing the track primed, as described above. It certainly has resulted in a common base for both ply and plastic sleepers. Haven't started colouring the sleepers yet - not sure whether to brush paint individually or get the air-brush out and spray the lot. Thanks for the colour suggestions. I've also read somewhere that RailMatch do a "sleeper grime" colour, which I might investigate.

 

Regarding Leamington (it's a long way off, yet), you're all very welcome to pop round and have a look at Delph in the flesh, so to speak.

 

Cheers,

 

Dave.

Hi Dave,

 

I've now had a chance to look at the photos on your blog and have posted a seperate comment. Thanks for the offer of a visit to see Delph I'm sure we will take you up on it.

 

Robin