Preparing for nailing

The track ballast is now down (well its not perfect but i could mess with it for ever to be honest). Now i have relaid the track and am doing final tests before i start nailing anything down. I've never nailed down N gauge track before so that could be fun...

Ballast

Armed with some glue and a bag of "granite ballast" building the scenery of Eskalon has begun. I intend to put down the track bed ballast first then re-lay the track this time permanently. The layout will operate as i gradually build up the scenery layer by layer, i can't really afford to do it all in one go.

Now scenery is where it often went wrong in the past. What can go wrong with glue and a bag of fine grain particles? Are you crazy? Its a catastrophe waiting to happen! So far everything seems fine... more or less...

Egger-Bahn layout (Video)

I found this video on Youtube showing a compact little HOe layout. Mine has a bigger board than this as the coaches i am using need wider radius curves for the loop. Nice layout though, maybe i shall put Eskalon up on Youtube one day...

The Spitfires come to visit

As well as model railways i also built model aircraft (and the odd ship) and have just completed my latest model a Spitfire F22. As it was the 6th Spitfire i have made i decided to take a photo of them all together, my model railway board was the best space available! These are 1:72 scale aircraft so are out of scale on my HOe layout (1:87 of course) but it was nice for them to visit! Hopefully by the time i build a 7th Spitfire i will have built up sufficient scenery on the Eskalon layout that they won't fit anymore.

An extra siding

The layout is pretty much final now but i decided to add one more siding to it in the top left corner, utilising some empty space and also adding a bit more operational flexibility. It also used up some spare track as i only needed to buy another set of points (though those are expensive enough of course!) Next step is to start planning the scenery.