Turnout and More Track

Next stage in track building for the Nystrup Gravel layout has been accomplished. The track that in daily use among the workers was called 'straight ahead' and used for storing surplus skips, has almost been finished as far as track laying concerns. I still need to solder on etched fish plates, but can't find my fancy folding tool needed to make the necessary bends to the fish plates.

Model track just as uneven as I aimed for. Sidings at the gravel sorting and lorry loading area in Nystrup wasn't maintained unless skips and locomotives began to derail.

After having made the first length of track in January, I carried on adjusting and connecting the Peco turnout. To make the turnout fit my primitive industrial line a little better, I replaced the switching mechanism with a simple piece of brass soldered to each tongue connected to the point lever with a piece of heavy NS wire. The original Peco plastic sleepers in the tongue section of the turnout were removed and replaced with wooden sleepers fitted to home made slide chairs from brass soldered to the stock rails.

The toe end of my rebuilt Peco turnout with rail ends masked before a quick blast of black primer from a rattle can.

With the turnout positioned and spiked, I fitted the long sleeper to hold the point lever. With a length of heavy NS wire I made a connecting rod from point lever to the tie bar. It turned out that I needed to do some resoldering of the tie bar to obtain the right amount of throw. The point lever still needs some final adjustments and painting before it can be fitted to its sleeper and connected to the turnout.

Sleepers and rails positioned with track gauges ready for the last half hour of spiking before the job is done.

Once the turnout was spiked I added further sleepers for the track nearest the baseboard edge. The sleepers were laid out with my sleeper spacing wooden block, their positions marked with a pencil and the sleepers fixed to the cork trackbed with white glue. I tried to represent a rather neglected siding with kinks and uneveness and I also added two fence post-type sleepers to create variety. 

Using the best parts of discarded sleepers to create new ones. Well, not quite new ones, but usable ones. With inspiration from 'Feldbahnen' by Paul Roloff I have built a few of these into my track.

With blue sky, sun and a nice covering of snow in the garden, I took the module outside on a pair of trestles for a short photography session. The large models in 1:19 scale benefits from the natural light and I don't have to worry about setting up artificial light.

 

Short video of the first test run on my newly finished track.

The garden is covered in snow and the module is also mostly white. I hope to see the layout covered in a new colour as spring arrives.

There is more track laying on the programme for me during Feburary, but I have also planned some work on a new figure that needs a bit of clean up and painting.