Interlocking

I have not really touched BT for a number of months, mostly because after ballasting was complete I then immediately broke a tie-bar clip on one of the peco points – which was incredibly disheartening after hours and hours of working on it.

I eventually summoned up the mental fortitude to tackle the break, which was done with a piece of gapped copper PCB strip with a hole drilled through it. Whether the solid joins stand the test of time will be debated, but at this point it was “do something or bin the whole thing”.

Weathering was done with brown-grey and an almost-black

After this and while cleaning the railhead, I found that almost two feet of rail had detached from the track base and was floating in mid air. How? Why? Not sure, but hopefully it can be reattached without too much fuss.

I’ve had my ‘ol reliable #579 running up and down the foreground of the layout with reasonable success, but before much further testing on P1/P2 and the ‘up’ side of the throat, i need to fix this rail. I’ve got some rail gauges on the printer which should hold it at the correct spacing while I glue it back in place.

I am a little annoyed that I’m still having to clean up rail sides and flangeways, I’d already done this a couple of times with a wagon but it seems that the locos would have been a better choice since any minor hiccup lifts them off the track and affects their power collection. Oh well!