Goodnight Sweetheart

This smells like a case of “you did a 37, so we’ll do a 31” , I’m already committed to the other firms 31 with I’m very happy with. Easy for a big firm backed by a big parent to engage in tit fir tat duplication, wait for another firm to announce a “long time in development” upgraded 60…..

The boards are the business to be fair, extremely light and easy to move about single handed. There also extremely robust as well, which is ideal as eventually the plan is to take it to shows locally. if your OO gauge id recommend the alignment track sections, 100% non alignment failure rate can’t fault them.

The new order make an appearance on a trial / gauging run.

The disused branch formation more or less completes in its basic form, some rail removal needed before the land forms are complete. l

I wanted to add a feature to the layout, so I’ve decided to lay a disused portion of railway. The idea is the compound for the flask transfers was built over the rest of the formation with the rest just left in situ. I laid out the track to the desired alignment. A bed of ballast was the laid for the track to be laid on top. The the usual PVA mix to glue it all down.

Probably anything used on the making tracks layout isn’t normal wear and tear, piddling around a normal persons layout even a large home or club one is.

1990s style formation with barrier, and brake vehicles because we all know 20ft of wagon will protect you against radiation poisoning …really looking forward to the Accurascale Mainline blue 31 at some point this year.

The chinchilla sand ballast has fully dried out and set solid, with a little more work it’ll look very good and much much cheaper than any other model ballast. I took the opportunity to spray the Peco bullhead stop blocks, using Halfords sprays as again there so much cheaper than model railway yellow paints.

It’s been a long time since we did any work on the OO project, so with school work complete we decided to crack on with spraying the track it’s base colour, and laying the ballast which will now be left for a few days to dry before additional colouring it added to the track.

UP Main to Line B (Leckwith North Junction m, Cardiff) is 25mph with flashers provided, The added magic is if the route is set UP Main to line A 25mph to 15mph you won’t get the flasher a conditional single yellow only with the next red releasing once the track section has been occupied for X time. Likewise the other side of Cardiff DN to UP Relief (25mph) can provide a flasher, and conditional release depending on how far in advance the route was called (3 sections to get the flasher). The odd one is DN main cross Moorland Road isn’t flasher equipped (70mph) even with a q 40th PSR very very close after completing the crossing. But, trying to answer the OP… 140 running on the ECML had a fifth aspect added to signals another green. So you’ve get GG G YY Y R as a normal sequence of signals for a stop, or GG G YY FYY FY G + Feather for a crossing move, I think there was one junction up north somewhere set up for very high speed crossing so the sequence would be different probably with primarily route indicators in addition to the crossing sequence of signals.

As we push forwards to getting the layout fully wired. I’ve been finishing off the dropper, bus and inter board connections. We’ve also fitted a Accurascale friction buffer stop to the end of the mainline, the sidings will have traditional rail built stops.

360 degree view on the wagons here….

Final sections of track laid onto the turntable today, just need to wire the bus up then it’s onto the scenic works.

I’m wondering if there will be a second run of the more popular 92 liveries, obviously in new numbers? The two tone grey non branded with EWS yellow logos went extremely it appeared. European Passenger Services, and SNCF would be nice along with more standard BR lcoos. Cheers

Track laying continued towards, and onto the turntable this evening. All board joints have been cut and checked to ensure alignment, huge relief to find they do align !!! The boy did the best joint on the layout as well. Before work started this evening, the other boards where taken down to allow us to walk freely round what we where working on. The mainline now curves away to the right onto the turntable. Turntable joint fixed down, we’re just waiting for rhe pva under the cork to set before we push further onto the turntable, and try to align the other end. Turntable with the first joint in place. I

92003 in the platform with a route learning trip. Accurascale’s finest Class 92 and 37 share the terminal area.

A little taster video of how the terminal will operate, it’s set up to allow different formations of flask train which also include trains with barrier and brake vehicles.

Today track laying is almost complete, just a short length to link the scenic and turntable together and the turntable itself to finish. The first of two electro magnetic uncouplers installed, I’ll need to wait until the relay board arrives before we can test it though. Next job, which I’m not looking forward to is cutting the rails across the joints - although we’ve used the new track alignment sections ensure “perfect alignment, a every time” we’ll see…… The boy made a little video of the testing this evening, even at this stage it looks good in our opinion anyway. The electro magnetic uncouplers, although we’ll need to fit keedee couplers unfortunately. The hole cut for the second uncoupler on the headshunt. Nice LED lite switch the operate each one. Mainline which needs another few lengths to complete (right), flask transfer siding (left). Station (left) with the yard loop (right). 37607 & 605 sit (just) in the head shunt,

A little bit of track down today, wired into the bus and the required board joints fitted. All being well, we’ll have a crack at pushing the track laying to completion next week.

Little more work on the layout before we start to lay the track, I’m determined not to make mistakes which tarnished previous layouts so it’s slow but steady to try and get things right this time, but working to a deadline of August 2024. Work today centred on printing the boards, marking out where track is going and the laying the cork before we temporarily lay the rack to make out dropper points and point motor holes etc.

That’s great thanks guys I really appreciate it.

It’ll only be bogie locos, so like you say there may well be no need. I’ll feed the frog wire through just in case. Thanks

I’m using peco oo bullhead points which are unifrog (is that the correct term?) I want to take to do the usual modification to them that you’d do to electrodrog points - wife across each pair of rail then feed them from cross wire for power. Frog juicer with a separate motor for movement only. Will this cause any problems with the operation of unifrog points ? Thanks in advance.

After some gentle guidance he cracked on and assembled all the boards, I’m more a guide than the lackey doing the work on this one.

Overall look at the concept, some minor alterations to do but more or less happy.