I could put it off no more. The second difficult bit of engineering - difficult for me anyway- had to be tackled.

For me, the enjoyment of a model railway is running it. I want to be transported back in time and to re-live what I imagine a country railway line in a corner of the GWR to have been like in the 1930's: what seems a golden era for British steam and a time modern enough to have some comforts, but still hanging onto solid principals of hard work and pride in that work being good and right, on time and clean. The country had survived The Great War but hadn't yet gone through the massive changes and austerity brought on by WW2: a war that changed our way of life forever. Part of that illusion for me is to model not just one station, but a small section of my fictional line: 3 stations. This means traffic will have a reason. However, even 3 stations isn't enough. The line needs to link to the rest of the network. For that I need a fiddle yard. But a traditional fiddle yard needs you to ...er.... fiddle to a greater or lesser degree. And that shatters my illusion.

So early on I came up with a solution: a set of hidden storage loops with a dumbbell return loop.

After leaving Newton Purcell, Down trains would join a continuous circuit for a time. A double junction off that would take the train into a tunnel. Inside, out of sight, a ladder of points would direct the train into the correct loop. I designed auto stops and reversing polarity etc so that when needed again the train would leave the loop, go over another points ladder, round the dumbbell reversing loop, back past the loops, out of the tunnel, over the double junction and back onto the circuits as an Up train. The key had to be that it would all happen out of sight and out of mind. So no point control in the normal sense. I would have to have route setting. So when the timetable says D, I press button D and don't have to give a thought to what actually happens. I would just drive the train to ....Banbury, Oxford, Birmingham, wherever!

On Mk1 in the loft, the storage loops were going to be below Newton Purcell. I actually made them and they worked. The mistakes were to design Newton Purcell to sit over the top, and to have too great a height difference between the two levels.

On Mk2, lessons have been learnt, but I still need to have the dumbbell going under the right hand end of Newton Purcell. It's a bit Chicken and Egg whether I should have built the dumbbell section and then put the station over it, but I did it the other way. The problems were that I needed a fairly large radius, so the reach across the baseboard would be very wide. Cutting an access hole in the baseboard solved that. Also the height difference between levels is now 3" instead of 5" which I was (stupidly) trying to use on Mk1. The framing around the Newton Purcell baseboards filled most of that 3" gap. Therefore the framing had to be cut to allow the dumbbell line to pass through. To prevent the station board sagging I have added small feet to the sides of the cuts so the vulnerable parts of the station board are supported off the dumbbell baseboard below. A bit tricky under the station, but I managed it.

There was no way I would be able to lay flexitrack in such a small gap, so I have used Peco Settack 4th radius curves and soldered them together. The almost 4 foot diameter semi-circle is glued onto foam underlay with pva. I then fed the line in through the gap and around the curve. Hey presto!

I ran a test coach through the first opening. All ok. Then bump. It wouldn't pass through the next opening. Peering in, I realised the gap at the rear was noticeably less than 3". The dumbbell board was dead level, I had made sure of that. But right at the start of Mk2 I hadn't been so careful to ensure Newton Purcell was level front to rear. It was only out by 4mm, but that was just enough. The easy answer would be to raise the rear of the station and make it level, but that board is screwed into the wall and I can no longer get to the screws!!! How dumb?????

So in the end I had to shorten the dumbbell board legs by 4mm increasing the height of the gap. All the small feet then had to be reset. But finally I have the track in place and whilst the lower board is now slightly off level, it is not enough to affect the trains.

I will delay gluing the track in place until I have the circuits and loops all laid out.

The carpentry isn't exactly cabinet maker quality, but it works and is stable.

There's too much clutter there, but work in progress. Note the MERG Servo 4 board wired in at the right hand end of the station, but not yet fixed in place

Back to the rest of the baseboards now.

Rich