Lochdubh: With track we have a railway...

Over the Easter weekend I took a little time for my own projects and over a lazy Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning took Lochdubh beyond just a wooden box...

The 'picture' included a turnout, one of a pair of British Finescale examples I built some time ago - I've pondered for some time about turnout control in a shelf layout and the need for a polarity switch of the frog in a thin baseboard had me stumped. In the end, as one, this may never be operated, and two, the 37 is a long wheelbase multi wheel pickup locomotive I've modified the turnout to effectively be 'dead frog'. The turnout isoperared by a brass rod buried in a 'cut' in the track bed, a second piece of 6mm MDF. I used tube to make it neat at the front, and some styrene to backfill the slot and protect the wire from glue ingress during scenic work.

The platform is formed from 9mm MDF and has been glued into place. I intend add a front surface in styrene, but there is no need to remove them for this - in fact I think this may well be easier in this instance. Painted and sealed with 'satin wood' paint, I quickly moved to cut, solder and lay the track. In lieu of fishplates I soldered the rails together, in this small size I think this is both strong enough, and much neater. The wiring makes use of some DCC decoder wire I bought and haven't used - it's 32AWG IIRC, and nice and fine. This is all hidden down the left hand end of the board.

The result is I can now pose the station and stock on track, and get a glimpse of the completed scene, very much the small slice of Scotland I'd dreamt of creating for some time. It's nice to work on something for myself, with no expectations on the output or the duration of the project. It will be done, when it is done. I can enjoy it as it is already, and good too, to practice ideas and work through solutions to seemingly trivial problems that can both help sharpen the saw (i.e. practice my skill) and be useful on future projects - in this instance the joint layout I'm building with George - Cambrian in N.

I wonder, if looking at the photo above you can see as much as I can? As my eye traces the familiar shapes and colours, from the large logo 37 to the Mk1, I imagine the line of the distant hills yet to be painted on the back scene and look forward to making further progress when the time is right. Until then though, more soon...

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