Indoors Too

The opportunity arose to finally have my indoor layout room again.
It started as HO (too small these days), would have been best in S but that would have entailed another scale to scratchbuild it all in.
So with 3' radius at our disposal and plenty of small engines and 4 wheelers in stock a shoehorn O gauge layout it shall be!
I didn't have enough Peco points in stockto do it  but did have enough of my home made jobs so I have made the sidings out of code 100 once again to match those points. Recycled once again.

Ballasting is under way

4108

The railway got a new loco today.
4108 was started some years before Bergs Hobbies mooted theirs. I used information from an early issue of the magazine and Ron Preston's book 'green diesels'.
It is made of styrene and brass mesh with Slaters wheels and a  Roxey gearbox. The sideframes are modified Col Shepherd.
Ted Freeman did the decals for me.

chocolate crackles on the move

The rake of private coal hoppers are on a trial run. A few things to tidy up but I couldn't wait to see them in operation. A more appropriate CHG (or two) and a 50 class perhaps one day.

 

regards

Bob

A video update

Here is some video with visiting steam

Visitors

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

Traffic on line

Today sees Hunter Valley Mine's ex NSWGR 1803 and 72 shuffle a short train of assorted goods wagons past Seven Mile Mulga on their way down to the mine site.

Traffic is slowed by the construction of a full size over pass near the back fence.

regards
 Bob

A station at last.

Today under blue sky after the passing of a big black cloud the railmotor was able to deliver passengers to the new station. Still bereft of walkways or overhead bridge unfortunately for them .

The station building is an 'Old Dog'  plywood kit and the water column from their stable too.

regards
Bob