New track supplies

Today i received the remaining track i needed for the layout and my first wagon. As can be seen from the photos below i now have my fiddleyard siding and the full 3 siding station complex. There arn't likely to be many changes to the track layout for the foreseeable future (no space for a start!) Though there could be a few tweaks before i nail it down.

Revised plan

Because of the reduction in the size of the board the plan has had to be amended a bit (though not as much as you might imagine). Much of this layout is already in place, i just need 3 more sets of points...

Lets build a railway!

My original plan for 2 120x60 boards connected together didn't quite work as it was just far too big in the spare room! So instead i am connecting a 120x35 board (which will form the backscene / fiddleyard area) to one of the 120x60 ones. After much hammering and fastening (and wood wastage) i now have a board! Lets build a railway!

Nothing is nailed down yet (i need some more track anyway) but things are starting to happen at last.

Testing the boards

I still have the fasteners to fix so the two boards can be made into one, and i want to paint the boards with a grey base coat... however its been a while since i've run my train so i thought i'd test the boards out. And they work great!

Our possible layout plan

Now we have finalised the size of the boards we can now finalise the layout plan for Phase 2 as well. This is my current layout design (as created in RailModeller). Its designed to fulfil the brief of combining a loop with shunting interest and can also be split into 2 parts should the layout need to be moved at any time. Now the final layout may not exactly look like this but it will be on the right lines (so to speak). The area at the bottom of the plan will be the "fiddle yard".

Building the boards

I am not very good at woodwork but i seem to have managed to built my boards without any mishaps and even without any swearing. I built a simple frame for each board to give it some rigidity and also somewhere for wires to go safely tucked. Next step will be to get some fasteners so the boards can be bolted together. And then start building a layout...

We have boards!

Today i finally bought the boards upon which i am going to build phase 2 of the Eskalon project. The two boards will be combined to form a total area of 1220 x 1212mm. This differed from my earlier plans which were 1500x750 but the boards will be easier to set up this way and require no sawing. Despite my grandfather being a carpenter by trade i am not that good at woodwork...

The different size actually works better, i will have more space for a station complex and sidings inside the loop compared to earlier plans. What i will do now is connect the two sections together with a frame. I have plenty of wood from an old wardrobe to use for this...