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More trackwork

Progress in Utrainia has shuddered to a virtual standstill, as the work/life balance takes a beating...

A major new contract this last week with some very tight deadlines has seen Utrainia take a backseat this week. In fact for most of the week Mt Adams has sat forlorn on the table waiting for me to give it some attention. Finally the last couple of nights I've managed to dedicate a few hours. This week (month?) the focus is on the last remaining trackwork, which involves making a double crossover. This:

Yikes. First step as ever is to print out the track plan and stick sleepers on to it. Then I spent about 3 weeks staring at it trying to work out the courage. And finally earlier this week I started cutting rail. I've started with the outside rails first, then...

Making tunnels

Tunnel building time here at Mount Adams this weekend...

Took a little bit of a breather this weekend while I pondered the next steps on my mini railway. I decided that tunnels were fairly high up on the list, as once scenery is in, it is too late to think about tunnels. So... I designed a tunnel mouth on Inkscape to laser cut, and thought a bit about the inside of the tunnel. Normally I just leave them plain, but since the tunnels are quite short and visible on this railway, it might be nice to have the insides looking like a proper tunnel.

So I laser cut some templates out of more old cereal boxes and started cutting out polystyrene. After a few false starts, here is my technique:

1) Rip some dimensional polystyene

Using Mr Hotwire 4000 and a guide rail, I "ripped" a sheet of polystyrene foam down to 40x70mm lengths.

...

First track down on Mt Adams

Exciting news tonight on Mt Adams...

Yesterday I soldiered on with the cork and soon had a good covering of cork. I also started building the upper station base, using some nice chunky plywood. Heavy, relatively speaking, but very flat and strong.

While I was at it, I cut out an inspection hatch to make getting to the station point-work easier. Nothing worse than having a complicated track arrangement that I can't get to if anything needs tweaking.

I even lined it with some MDF. It will also help support the plywood base, so ...

Mt Adams marches on

Progress continues on Mt Adams...

Gluing on the inclines continued over the weekend and before long I had everything fixed down. Here it is part way through:

Tape measures, rolls of solder, stepper motors and scuba weights all lending a hand to keep things flat!

I did a test fit with the lower station and noticed that the east end of the loop had quite a sharp kink in it, whereas the west end flowed much more smoothly.

The more I looked at it, the more it bugged me. So tonight I printed out a new alignment and went abou...

Lower station trackwork complete

Lots to report today on Mt Adams...

Finished two sets of points today. I'm getting back into the swing of making turnouts, and the second went together very quickly and smoothly.

I've discovered the Dremel is great at sanding down the point blades and stock rails. Why I never thought of this before...??? It saves a huge amount of fiddly manual filing, and so my second point only took an hour or so to build.

By dinner time I had the entire crossing loop built. I ran out of sleepers part way through to had to make some more our...

Messy woodwork and the first turnout

With a newly repaired hot wire cutter, progress continues once again on Mt Adams...

Today I finished cutting out the inclines. Mr Hot Wire 4000 did a great job, effortlessly cutting things nice and square. By the time I finished though it looked like a polystyrene bomb had gone off in the garage:

Next on the list was another messy job: routing out the hand grips on the module ends.

The extra bits of wood are my guides, as freehanding a massive router is a recipe for disaster.

After a quick lick with sandpaper, here is t...