Last week we had an opportunity to enjoy good company and visiting stock for 3 days.
The new catenary had only just been installed on a trial basis and the 'smoke' was taken out of the locos under some stanchions that had slipped down lower than spec.
Here we see a 38 being trialled on the mail.
Electrically the layout performed well. I have not cleaned the track in a long time, just an occasional brush to remove leaves and twigs and a scrape to remove bird poo. I put a few drops of powdered graphite on both main lines and that was it... no issues. Of course nothing will be perfect for visitors and some loose ballast jammed a point and two microswitches occasionally failed to do their job due to the points moving about. Both issues a result of a poor selection of glue in some areas to hold the ballast. Some screws inserted in the right place stopped the wandering points.
Good weather meant we were able to run late into the evening.
regards
Bob
