Wednesday, May 25, 2011

New setup tracks

With the Adelaide Model Railway Show fast approaching, work has quickened on rebuilding the setup tracks for Liralau - this time, they've been built like the proverbial brick sh*t house, they are damn heavy, but should last for many years without bowing.I'd rather over engineer them, than have them bow and have to start over next year.

Sarah's given the completed modules a coat of paint to seal them, and to blend them into the rest of the layout, now it actually looks finished out the back.

Last night track laying began in earnest, with the join behind the pub being re-laid (again) - still needs some work, but the Auscision B class that always gave trouble traversed it with ease. Even with the gaps cut into the rail for the module join, so far so good. We've now gone from 2 1/2 roads on the set up tracks to four, with loco and railcar/railmotor sidings at each end, i've also been able to ease the radius slightly on the end curves and also ease the kink that used to exist at each end of the yard.

The yard is being laid with a mixture of Peco code 100 and 75 points (shimmed to match the rail height of the code 100 points) and Peco code 100 streamline flex (I can't believe it was cheaper than the Atlas equivalent) - by the time the yards complete, there should be over 20 metres of standing room on those sidings - enough room to have the full Overland in the yard without fouling any of the other roads.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Superchooks

Following on from my earlier post regarding Railshow, one of our operators- Brad Turner, provided me this photo of my two car superchook set 2301-2302 pausing momentarily at Liralau station while on tour.

Unfortunatley, the spud has a split gear which caused some running problems - i'm hoping to have a replacement power bogie shortly.