Captain Nick

I tried to reply to Rowsley 17D by quoting his post but I obviously have not done it right. Can anybody point me in the right direction please?

I have tried several methods of ballasting but the one I use mainly is the pre wetting of a water and isopropyl (drop) and/or drop of washing up liquid. One of the best liquids I used was and after sun spray which also had an anti mosquito preparation added. I still use the bottles but now with my own mix. At least I won't get malaria! Following the pre wetting, I then use a pipette to soak in a 50-50 mixture of wood glue. I don't like uniform coloured ballast as in the fifties the track was often kept neat and tidy by gangers and consequently the look can change over a small distance. If you look at old pictures of Peak Forest and similar, there was always a white coating of lime dust. particularly near kiln sidings. Dirt is king! I rather like using different grades of sand which bed down better between the shallow sleepers. Some of the sand has come from several beaches in various parts of the tropics. Incidentally, the track is made of C&L components and the turnouts are indeed hand built but not by me. As a retirement present to myself I commissioned Norman Saunders of Just Tracks to build it for me. The subsequent wiring and ballasting is all my own work carried out painfully slowly.

Here are some more views of the layout which show some of the work I have been doing recently. This is looking south east towards the station This one is looking towards the quarry approach road and is a bit of work I have only just planted. The unfinished kilns but placed in situ for the moment. Another general view of the station area A close up of the quarry approach road and retaining wall. This is again hand scribed onto filler which has been applied to 3mm plywood. The coating for the cliff face is a mix of artex, plaster and ordinary wood glue. This is put on after I've taken sharp instruments to the insulation foam which I use for the base. Even after it has dried I can still attack it more to get the effect that I'm after.

Many thanks for your kind words. I am attaching a picture of the kilns which I have been given permission to reproduce here. It shows the kilns in relation to the railway and the general topography. It also shows how dominant a building it was. Thanks PGH for letting me use this photo for illustrative purposes and also for your plan of the quarry which has helped me make up drawings to model from. Nick

If anyone is interested in the Central Lime Works or indeed the quarrying around Buxton then you might like to look at this excellent thread. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/72947-ici-buxton-tunstead-etc-railways-in-the-1960s/

Many thanks for your feedback yesterday. I have just spent the best part of an hour writing an update together with posting some pictures but I hit the wrong key or something and it all disappeared . Winter is a busy time for me as I have a magazine to edit and then 'management' requires that I take her to somewhere warm and sunny in January to be followed by a little light skiing in February. I have to say that I'm glad I retired when I did as I shouldn't have enjoyed operating a ship in the weather we have all experienced over the last months. My heart goes out to those still at sea. Since my last proper post of last October I have received my back scene picture, a five metre long piece of 'wallpaper' that I had printed which, with the help of 'management', we managed to hang relatively easily. This was made of two panoramas that I took in the area on a wet day last June. One was in Chee Dale and the other in Millers Dale. I also began to build a model of the Buxton Central Lime works which dominated Blackwell Mill until about 1970 when they were removed by ICI. These lime kilns, five in number, were originally built in late Victorian times but four were considerably modified in the twenties and thirties by vertical extensions. They were also strengthened with concrete and additional buttressing. The delivery of lime to the kilns was also changed at this time as was the delivery of fuel which remained coal until they were taken out of commission. I have completed the main lower structure and will return to complete it soon but in the meantime I have been building the scenery along the back of the layout now that the back scene has gone up and I have some clear idea in my mind as to how to proceed further. This latter pic shows the disused western kiln. The stone work is done by hand onto filler which has been bonded onto plywood. I quite enjoy scribing the stone work. Its quite therapeutic in a way. I hope to show a picture of the real kilns later.

I have not updated my layout page for sometime. I had a new computer and since then I have not been able to log on due to me forgetting the password. I tried the password reminder but I received nothing back in my mail box. Anyway, to cut a long story short some computer wiz kid said 'Have you tried web mail?' I hadn't ever used it and sure enough, in the spam box were all the RM password reminders and a few other missing e-mails. So here I am signed in and almost ready to do an update on Wormdale, on(in?) which I have recently been doing a lot of (very slow) work. I now have a back scene and I'm progressing the scenery along the back of the layout which I have all but completed but for some detailing etc. which I shall do later. Anyway I shall endeavour to post some pictures in the next day or two

Having just returned for a trip to Edinburgh, I have restarted my work on 'The Hill' which will dominate the left (west) side of the layout. The rock faces are supposed to represent natural ones gouged out by the ice age and lower ones hacked out by navies and later quarrymen in the early part of last century. I have almost finished it but not planted it yet. There are a clump of matured trees to go on the top but I have yet to attempt these but will have ago at them during the next week or two. So far I'm quite pleased with the result having never used static grass , or indeed, any other scenic stuff before. This week end I'm attempting to put up the back scene which is 5.2m long and 0.8m high!

Hi PGH. Thanks for posting the track plan. I hadn't realised that each pair of kilns had their own narrow guage feed although by the looks of things either track could feed all four. Best regards. Nick

Hi Al. Many thanks for your comments. If my fellow locals like it then that encourages me enormously. I have also been following your layout with interest and had toyed with the idea of incorporating Bakewell station too but yours is a fantastic effort. Being in exile in Plymouth, I'm very nostalgic for the White Peak and with Wormdale I'm (hoping to) encompassing various items that particularly interest me such as Buxton Central Lime kilns, the former crusher at Peakdale and, heaven help me, Chinley station. Regards Nick

Hi PGH. Thanks for posting those photos, none of which I have seen before. I have read the piece on the Tarmac web site but it seemed inconclusive regarding these kilns which have obviously been changed and modified throughout their working lives. I have a few photos taken of this plant, those mainly being E R Morten copyright, (his son was my science teacher 1960-63), however they don't answer the mystery of the gantry. Also missing from photos are coal waggons but there again, so are the oil tankers. There does seem to be a tank arrangement between the inner two upper kilns which is connected to the gantry pipework. My late father, a former Allsop Moor quarryman, was the areas (GMWU) union branch secretary from 1947 to 1963 and frequently visited all the local quarries as the majority of quarrymen were members, so I guess he would have known. As for the closed tops, there is photographic evidence that these were closed off well before 1939, possibly as early as 1934. Many thanks for the photos and information. I would be interested to see the track plan. Best regards Nick

Hi PGH. I have only just come accross this thread and seen your wonderful photos. I'm just about to do a model very much based on the Buxton Central Lime Kilns which I remember very well from my youth. If you have any more photos of this structure I should be very grateful if you would post them. There are a couple of things that have intrigued me about this structure. One is were they fueled by coal or oil during the late fifties (converted from coal perhaps earlier) and the other is the purpose of the gantry arrangement which could be swung out at rightangles to the kiln or kept alongside it when not in use. Would you have any ideas? Best regards Nick

Hi Joe. So tha's from Tidza. I bet you never realised that Wormdale is between Chee Dale and Millers Dale and now can only be accessed when the moon is full and Mars is aligned with Saturn and you have to be wearing clogs too! Seriously, many thanks for you comments. As a local I'd very much appreciate your comments as I slowly proceed with this project. Here is another picture of The Hill. Nick [ attachment=331999:West-End-1.jpg]

It has been a year since I last updated Wormdale. I always meant that this would be a long project but it is proving slower to make headway than I originally envisaged. I think this may due to lack of available time and also by the fact that due to my inexperience, I hesitate as to what task to begin next in order to move the project on. Over the last winter, following my return from South East Asia, most of the time was spent on my back completing the wiring and then much of spring I was hunched over the layout completing the painting and ballasting of the track. That was about 70 metres worth as it turned out. During the summer I had a go at scratchbuilding a bridge and a tunnel mouth, having decided it was time to start on some scenery. I also put in the two island platforms which are faced with stonework but filled in with plaster of paris and skimmed with filler. I made this out of plyword with ordinary filler applied which then had the courses applied using a fine compass needle. To give some depth to the stonework, I put on a little of the lumpy artex/UPA that I had made up for the rock faces of The Hill I have now built 'The Hill' which will dominate the west end of the layout but I have yet to put grass and and other scenic plant growth on it. I have been experimenting with my new static grass applicator and have been quite happy with the results so far on a mockup piece of siding. The Hill was made using PIR insulation which I found excellent to work with even if messy. I was concerned that I may not have been able to get the rock faces as I wanted them but not only did I get the results I was after but the actual sculpting was very satisfying in an abstract sort of way. I originally shaped the bock of PIR to the shape that the land would have been after glacierisation and before man began quarrying. This was followed by sculpting the natural rock faces and then the quarried ones. I found that a mix of Artex and upa was great for finishing off the rock strata and also which allowed for tweaking after it had set. The non rock surfaces are covered in coloured plaster. I have also just had my backscene delivered which I had printed from some of my own photos taken around Chee Dale this summer but stitched together to make them appear familiar and in keeping with the area but different, as it were.

Since my last post I have been wiring up a section on the right hand side of the layout. This is part of the 'D' power district and is fed from the DCC booster. The track dives under the eaves at this point before curving back behind the scenic area and on to the fold up bench area where the cassettes are. I came to the conclusion early on that I didn't have enough room for a decent size fiddle yard so I chose the cassette method. I made the cassettes a couple of years ago and they may give rise to some mirth as they are two metres long and I can't quite see how I'm going to use them in the way I had originally intended. Hey-ho! I came up with an idea based on the Britannia Tubular Bridge on Anglesey, as originally built. It was a bridge I knew well as I went to school a few hundred metres to the west of it. As the length was to be 2 metres it had to be fairly rigid longitudinally as well as being fairly light so I came uup with the idea of enclosing the track within 75mm section plastic trunking. The track is made up of 25mm aluminium angle secured by screws to a bed of 18mm 70mm wide ply. The whole thing sits on a lateral trackway which enables the cassets to be positioned. The trackway also provides a power feed from the DCC bus at each end of the cassette by way of 2 pan head screws at each end, one connected to ve + and the other to ve - . To protect the track from damage by movement of the cassettes and to provide support and reduce friction when sliding, I have uses 25mm plastic angle with notches cut in it to allow wheel flanges to pass. The pan head screws at each end also provide for vertical adjustment for the cassettes. Well, its cumbersome to use to turn whole trains around in such a confined space but it does work. In the words of Fagin, 'I'd better think it out again!'

Many thanks Great Northern for your very kind comments. I'm not so sure that I deserve them, in particular, I'm far slower than you in producing anything. I have been following your thread with a great deal of interest and awe although the ECML is foreign terrortory to me. I am determined, however, to try and achieve the standard that you and others have shown is achievable. I have still a lot to do before I can get the layout remotely looking how I intend to be. There is much work to do painting the track, ballasting and building the platforms before I can get down to the scenic work. My wife tells me that we are going away on hols for much of October so I'm hoping to get the wiring done before then. It is interesting that you mention suitcase connectors as I think there is another thread somewhere hereabouts where some tend to decry them. Thus far I have found then cheap to buy in bulk, easy to use and so far, have had no electrical delivery problems. As for wiring, I don't think anybody should be put off if one approaches the task of wiring up in a methodical way. I quite like being 'downunder' and occasionally have been known to nod off. (I've had afternoon kips for forty odd years as part of the seafaring/watchkeeping thing and the afternoon sleepiness is still there. At least that's my excuse!) For those of you who, like Great Northern, find Millers Dale a beautiful place here is a panaoramic picture I took about three weeks ago as a possible backdrop to Wormdale. I'm not sure that I will use it though as the extensive tree growth over the last fifty years has masked much of the limestone outcrops that hitherto could be seen. I took the photo from the top of the lime kilns at the east end of the viaducts. Regards Nick

Hi cbeagleowner. Thanks for your kind comments. I know Hassop well and was only passing there a couple of weeks ago. Bill Hudsons wonderful book has been my 'bible' for many years as have been the many pictures taken by the late E R Morten who photographed the area intensely from the early thirties until closure in 1968, providing a fantastic historical record of the area. Incidentally his son was my science teacher between 1960 and 63. One of the main reasons for scratch building Chinley station is because Bill Hudson has provided the drawings in 'Through Limestone Hills'. I am also using the drawing of the road bridge at Hassop. Its a shame I can't post some of these photos but of course they are copyright and I have no pictures of my own from the period. The lime kilns I am going to attempt are the ones that stood at Peak Forrest junction and photographed by ER Morten and is shown on page 154 of Mr Hudson's book. Regards Nick

Many thanks Will. I have been playing around with Photoshop to come up with some (very) abstract views of how I envisiage the layout will look once I get started on the scenic work. First I have to complete the ballasting and track painting. There is still about 75% to do and at my rate of working, it will take a bit of time. I have been impressed by Chris Nevards ballasting using sand and I particularly like Captain Kernow's approach as well as his method of putting it in place. I have tried the various methods including using Copy-dex but I have yet to try substituting IPA for the washing up liquid. As for the track painting, I use a small brush rather than spraying. Here is a picture of the layout looking west And this picture shows an abstract mock-up. And looking eastwards I apologise for the quality of my artwork but I hope you get the right idea. Regards Nick

Hi Peter This is a fantastic layout which I have been following with interest. As I come from Buxton where my dad was the 'union man' who looked after most of the workers in all the areas quarries it certainly brings back the memories for me. When I was a nipper I often waited in the car at the quarries whilst he was on union business. Regards Nick

Another picture of the underneath. In order to help with the wiring I have mirrored copies of the track plan stapled to the underside. The Blue and orange wires are the DCC bus and the sub bus. The stragerley ones on the right are the leads where this particular bus, 'C' power district, is plugged into the back of the box that houses the command station. I have had a particular glitch in this section in that the tortoise edge connectors have to be fitted 'just so' or else I get shorts. I can't quite get to the bottom of this problem. I guess it could be a bad batch but they look the same as all my others. You can also see some of the holes I made in the original base boards to accept the point motors and the droppers. Regards Nick

I'm not exactly a fast worker when it comes to modelling. As its all new to me I'm feeling my way along and hopefully learning. As for the panel, it looks quite pleasing but lift the lid then its a rats nest of wires. There about 100 metres stuffed in there. I made the mistake of not soldering the wires onto the switches but used push on contacts which tend to fall off when someone sneezes. When I built it eighteen months ago, I hadn't done any soldering and I'm still naff at it. If anyone has an idea how to keep my push-ons in place I'd be grateful to hear it. I have yet to wire up the extreme righthand side and of course, the freight avoiding line has not been fitted or indeed has the baseboard been constructed for this as yet. Two wires only DCC!! Regards Nick

Here is a little more about how I went about starting this project. The boards arrived in order starting from the Manchester end of the layout. For one reason and another there was a hiatus in the rate of delivery but during this time I had a go at wiring, track painting and ballasting. (See above) I also built 2 metre long cassettes about which I will write later. I also built the mimic panel which perhaps could have been wired up in a more simple way but it works. It was about this time that I decided to buy an NCE Pro Cab having tried out a Power Cab for a few months on a test track that I had built. Having read various views aired on RM Web on the subject, I decided that the layout would be divided up into six power districts and in addition to the Pro Cab there would also be a booster unit too. Each of the six power districts is protected by a switch and an NCE circuit breaker. The wiring is, I suppose, a ‘star’ bus made up of a main and a secondary bus. A bi-polar 12v DC circuit provides the power for the turnouts which are all tortoise with edge connectors. This picture shows the panel in what will be its stowed position when not in use under the freight avoiding line. This is in its operating position having been slid out using adapted drawer runners. The whole thing is unpluggable. The NCE lead from the main box to the booster around the front of the panel is a temporary measure. Most of the track is now in place and almost all is wired up. The only section not in place is the freight avoiding line and the freight yard which I shall leave until the backscene, track painting ballasting and the platforms are in place. I still have some issues with poor running in places which I am trying to rectify presently. With having the track made near to fine scale standards I am finding that many of my locos have too tight back to backs and climb over the flange ways, lose power or both. As well as getting this problem fixed I am also exploring the practicality of fitting ‘stay alive’ units to my 0-6-0 locos. Incidentally most of my locomotives are sound chipped. I have a few locos awaiting chips which I will get around to soon. Regards Nick

Hi Anglian. I have been experimenting with very thin colour washes administered with small paint brushes. I have used Colron Jacobean Oak on the sleepers to quite good effect but more still to do and play around with. I certainly don't want the ballast and sleepers to look uniform throughout the layout. As I mentioned earlier, this is my first attempt at ballasting and is still very much a learning process. I am quite happy with the rail colour which is Berber Leather made by Craig and Rose and is in their 'Chalky Emulsion range. I buy it in 100ml matchpots which go along way. I put it on with a brush.

Hi Anglian, The layout is OO guage but near to fine scale standards. I take your point about the freight avoiding line but I guess I kind of got carried away at the planning stage. I can't change it as, although not in position, the trackwork has been constructed. Here are some pictures. You can see the freight avoiding line going off to the right. These lines will also access the freight yard Ignore the LNWR signal box, it should be a Midland one. I've just plonked it there for the picture. The ballasting in the fore ground is my very first attempt and only goes as far as just beyond the SB. I'm not happy with the colour as I feel it is too sandy. It needs to be greyer. Also I'm not yet happy with the sleeper colour either. Regards Nick

Hi everybody. I thought it was about time that I proclaimed my nascent layout to my peers here on the RM Web. The RM Web has been extremely inspirational and the fountain of most of my accumulating knowledge for the past four or five years that I have been ‘lurking’. I’d like to begin by thanking you all for your posts and threads in the various sub-sections that have given me the spur to get my project on the go. I have haven’t done any modelling before so it is a very new experience for me. As well as my wife, who has encouraged me to get started, particular thanks go to John Russell of Bromsgrove Models and Brian Lambert who have given me particular advice when sought. I’m not a natural joiner of clubs and groups so I begin my thread with a certain amount of trepidation but I feel that I ought to put something back in order to, hopefully, provide some interest and to help others in the way you guys have helped me. There is still so much to learn and achieve in my new hobby and I know there will be a few ‘I wouldn’t have done it like that’ comments which is to be expected especially so as I have said a few ‘I won’t do it like that again’ comments to myself already. Anyway, here goes, publish and be damned! I retired last year after a forty three year career in the Merchant Navy having specialised for the last thirty years in operating passenger super ferries (RO-Pax) around the UK but latterly in the Mediterranean. Thirty years ago, my then wife to be, bought me a Hornby train set for a laugh. This she now regrets somewhat as this one act on her part re-ignited an interest in model trains (and big trains) that had lain dormant since I was about fourteen when ships and shipping began to dominate my interests. I was born and brought up in Buxton which is, apparently, the highest market town in the UK and was, up until the end of the sixties, well afforded with railways of LNWR and Midland origin. There were always plenty of freight and passenger operations to observe. We lived less than a mile from Buxton sheds and I grew up with the noise of shunting taking place at all times of the day together with the blasting from the omnipresent limestone quarries that surrounded the town. I was never a train spotter as such but was always more interested in watching trains go by, and which, as I became older, developed into an interest in railway operations. Growing up in Buxton, exciting days out were often those when the family would go on a shopping trip to Manchester by taking the branch to Millersdale and then boarding a St Pancras – Manchester Central express. In my mid teens I often set off from Millers Dale to London or travelled to stay with my elder brother in Weymouth. Whilst waiting the arrival of a southbound train on the platform it was always preceded by the faint distant sound of the approaching express, the noise amplifying and fading as it passed through the short tunnels, and then going completely quiet as it entered the longer Chee Tor No 1 tunnel only for the sound to appear even louder as the train burst out of the tunnel seconds later, (What loco will it be – a namer?) becoming almost deafening and now with the squeal of brakes as it came into view around the corner by the signal box and rumbled into platform 1. So nostalgia has played a large part in my layout planning. Basically, having decided not to model a particular place, my aim has been to try and capture various aspects of the Buxton area that fascinate me such as Chinley station, the lime kilns that stood guard over Peak Forest junction and of course, the Midland main line running up to the summit of the line at Peak Dale. I became fascinated with reading about the posturing of the LNWR and Midland that took place when both tried to prevent each others aspirations in the nineteenth century. This led me to wonder what might have been if history had been played out differently and that ‘Railway Mania’ had continued for a little longer. Just suppose, in a parallel universe that LNWR saw an opportunity to join Stafford with Sheffield by a more direct route which also would enable them to gain more of the growing limestone traffic of Derbyshire and provide a link between South Yorkshire and the new ports being developed on the Bristol Channel. What if the LNWR and the Midland were coerced by Parliament and others into sharing the costs of building Totley Tunnel in return for running rights into Sheffield for the LNWR? That would mean a junction with the Midland at Grindleford. Then I got thinking about possible further strategic moves by the Midland in a kind of tit for tat; what if Midland then saw an opportunity to join South Yorkshire with the Cheshire Committee Lines south of Manchester a move which would interest their other partners to stump up some of the money in return for running rights. That is basically my thinking behind my ideas for a layout, the construction of which I hope will keep me busy well into retirement although I have other duties to perform and be accounted for! So, in my parallel universe, The LNWR built their main line northwards from Ashbourne with an end on junction with North Staffs and on to the White Peak before briefly joining the Midland before turning to the north east and Grindleford. In the meantime the Midland built a line from just south of Buxton through very expensive tunnels via Leek and Congleton to Join the GC lines at Winsford thus enabling traffic to bypass Manchester to the south. This would possibly thwart other companies’ proposals for linking the east and west coast. With the LNWR line proceeding north at Stafford, I have envisaged Great Western becoming a junior partner in the enterprise utilising their junction with the LNWR at Wolverhampton and their shared line through the Welsh Marches not to mention the line from Stafford to Wellington being mutually useful to them. Where these lines cross on the White Peak, 5 miles from Buxton and 2 from Tideswell, is in Wormdale. It is named after the nearby village of Wormhill, a small village which actually exists above Chee Dale. In my parallel universe, the river Wye makes a wide sweep to the south between Chee Dale and Millers Dale and leading off to the north of this is a small tributary dale, gouged out by the melting glaciers, that leads up to the village. Cutting across this small narrow dale is a coll through which the Midland main line passes in a cutting from Millers Dale to Chee Dale; it is here that the station of Wormdale lies. It is where passengers change for Buxton, but now Buxton passengers also have a direct route to Birmingham, the South and Southwest but also to North Wales and the North East. Reading various posts, I know that some of you think that models should be of real places and I can understand that but for this project, my first and probably my last, I want to give a feel for the area from which I am exiled. I also want to use models of my favourite locos and as this is a (my) parallel universe, why not? Taking into account the opinions of many of you that the railway should look as though it has been engineered through the landscape then that is what I shall endeavour to do. The railway room is in part of a loft conversion and measures 6metres over the viewing area but I have also an extra metre at either end under the eaves where the track curves back through 180 degrees to where I have a cassette arrangement. This gives me a scenic area of 1500 feet in old money. Not a lot but then Millers Dale station was constrained by the topography of the area. I wanted to have a station with five platform faces made up of fast and slow through lines which divide to the west of the station to Manchester and Sheffield, the former into a deep cutting and the latter into a tunnel. To the north of the down station throat I wanted to have limestone kilns based on the ones that used to overlook Peak Forrest junction together with the crusher that used to stand until the 1990s at Peak Dale by the road bridge that crosses the line there. As I mentioned earlier, I want the station buildings to be closely modelled on those of Chinley which Bill Hudson, in his wonderful book, ‘Through Limestone Hills’, has provided the diagrams of. In my parallel universe, the LNWR line coming up from the south converges to run side by side with that of the Midland a mile to the south east of the station so is ‘off scene’. I have also declared (in that other universe’s history) that a junction was effected during the First World War where the two main lines come together thus turning the LNWR line into slow up and down lines running into the east of station. I have also suggested that there is another quarry with sidings on this stretch but ‘off scene’ beyond the road bridge that will be the scenic break at this end of the layout. Operationally, I want to operate trip and shunting workings as well as through expresses, locals and freight trains. I began construction back in 2003 or 4. I say begun in that I began to build the baseboards but then I found I had to use those as a bench for making a 3 x 3.5 metre summerhouse for my mother up in Buxton where her existing one was in danger of falling down through age. It had been a first aid post for the AA battery sited in the next field during the last war. In case you are wondering how a summerhouse can be constructed on the third floor of a house in Plymouth for garden in Buxton, well, it was made as a sectional flat pack and then taken up the M5 in a hired van. Anyway, I digress. I’d had a rough plan for the layout and so the base boards were constructed accordingly with 9mm plywood braced with 44mm x 33mm timbers. I faffed about for a year or two debating what sort of track I wanted and was I going to go down the DCC route but with DC turnout operation. Having persuaded my good lady that I needed (wanted) hand made track and turnouts which may (will) prove costly as I did not feel confident enough to produce such work myself, certainly not in the time scale I was working to. I opined to her that up until now “I have had no expensive hobbies (e.g. no golf- difficult on a ship!) other than skiing and our travel to foreign parts which we both do together my love”. At least that’s how my argument went at the time. So with a green light from ‘management’, I approached Norman Saunders of Just Tracks with my plans which he Temploted, gave advice and made some practical changes. Construction duly began in 2010. Norman proposed constructing the track back at his Swindon base as series of large jigsaw like pieces that would sit on my baseboards. Delivery would be in bi-monthly instalments to coincide with my leave roster on the ship (month on – month off). These sections, made up of damp resistant 6mm MDF, were of differing sizes and shapes and proved difficult to fit on my existing base boards as they came pre-fitted with tortoises and droppers. Holes had to be made etc which didn’t always quite line up. The original pristine baseboards ended up looking like someone had taken a sledge hammer to them with holes made to take the tortoise and droppers. However, after spending hours on my back removing and re positioning the 2 x 3 bracing, I eventually got the track boards positioned. Phew! That wasn't too bad afterall! More pics soon Regards Nick