Last week I had friends over and made a big dent in the trackwork. I took last Monday off work to recover from that and clean the house and putter on the layout. In the week since, I’ve made a fair bit more progress in starting to rough in the track beyond what was glued down last weekend.
Working on the complicated crossovers that lead to the sidings on the currently non-existent peninsula.
In the week since, I’ve worked on some little clean ups and starting to advance getting the track ready to complete the primary trackwork between the two ends of the layout. it’s a slow process, and one where making sure the tracks aren’t so sharp or misaligned now will make the layout run much better down the road. A single days help from a couple of friends has set me up with things I can work away at on my own for a half hour here or an hour there when I get home from work, or need to clear my mind while about the house.
The most complicated bit of trackwork left are the switches and crossovers to the peninsula shown in the image above. As I’ve been working on this, I still don’t have the peninsula built, and I haven’t settled on it being permanently affixed or hinged, but as I’ve worked on the track, I definitely need it in place to allow the track work to be properly aligned and cut if it is going to be hinged/removable.
A success, these switches I got adjusted and the holes for the frog wires and throwbars drilled myself and down into position to let me start working on the track alignment at the east end of the layout in the closet.
As I’m roughing out the track, I’m also looking at making sure I am happy with where elements are going, and that I have enough room for acceptable representations of the buildings I want to model that are served by the layout. This has seen me move pieces from the track plan a little, but for the most part what I’ve designed is becoming a reality in the space. Its a good feeling and it is giving me continued motivation to push ahead with work seeing things come together as they have.
Looking to and from the closet, the glued down track stops at the switch in the foreground on the left image. the gap from there to the glued down track in the closet is currently being roughed in.
I have a lot of things to do, I’ve been struggling with my soldering technique, and supplies. The “no clean” flux I have is useless, it just runs away from where I put it and I can’t get solder to do simple things like tin the end of a wire with it. Writing about my adventures in soldering is on my to-do list, but I’m probably going to wait until I actually work out my soldering problems so I can provide some insight on how i finally got competent at it (I’ll settle for competent, capable or good would be outstanding achievements!)
Musings on my Model Railroading Addiction 