Falcon reprieve!

Because Falcon had developed a distinctly metallic grinding sound i had decided to put my oldest engine into storage however a final clean seems to have solved the issue so Falcon will remain active until i get a 5th engine at least! Its great to have Falcon back to normal as usually it was the smoothest of runners. In other news the main station has now been glued down and a couple of trees have been moved.

New waggon

Time for a new waggon before Xmas? I picked up this nice Egger-Bahn waggon off Ebay, i was especially pleased to get it because of the colour, adding some real variety to the rest of the freight fleet which is in various shades of brown!

Recent updates

To get rid of a brown out caused by a dodgy point i've added a wire "bypass" for the point, i've also started using logs to cover up electric cables and other unnatural breaks in the scenery. Hopefully the layout won't end up looking like a hurricane has hit it with bits of wood all over the place!

Falcon will be withdrawn at the end of the year when a new coach for the Jam Sandwich arrives. One of the Zillertalbahn coaches will also be withdrawn (the non-push pull one) to make space for it. Falcon and the coach will be cleaned and then put in storage for 6-9 months when they will return and some other stock will take their turn have a rest. 

I'm thinking now of getting another engine early next year, probably one of the new Liliput shunters but until then everything is running fine!

Close in

The much easier access to the layout i now have after moving Eskalon means i could take these interesting close-ups.

Splitting up the station

I'm experimenting with splitting the station and having a terminus and a through station to add some operational variation. Its probably time to start naming these stations too.

Some operation

Some photos from today's running.

A change of orientation

One major problem with where Eskalon is sited is that the layout was somewhat deeper than i originally intended and thus there wasn't really enough space. Because of the layout of the room the layout is in i couldn't easily operate the layout and also the far side of the layout was only just reachable. So i have now reorganised the room and moved where Eskalon sits, a rather intricate operation as the layout was never designed to be moved but all went well. Now i can actually sit properly at the side of the layout while operating it and i can now reach the far side of the layout easily. In fact a photo like this would have been impossible until today.