10-01-2023, 10:36 AM
Thank you everyone. It's scheduled to be at it's first show next Saturday and Sunday.
I have finished it to operation, starting with the trackwork:
Since I'm hand-laying the ends, I glued the ties and ballast down first. There is a standard for ballast in Free-mo. You are supposed to use WS fine grey ballast for the first 6" of your mainline on both ends. The club decided to go with light grey, the one color I didn't have. I also didn't like the light gray so I went with their blended gray. I doubt anyone will have a hissy fit over it as the ballast can change color depending on what you use for glue.
It was a bit of a challenge to attach the short pieces of rail to the trestle. When it was removed for the layout the rails were simply cut with a dremel tool. The track on the trestle is Micro Engineering briudge track so I had to carve the spikes away from the first tie so I could slip the rail joiner on. I then soldered the rail to the bridge track. Usually when I hand lay track I spike every 3-4 tie but I spiked almost every tie this time as this will be attached to other modules and needs a bit of extra strength.
Then I wired in the feeders to the track. The nice thing about handlaying is there's no plastic ties to actidentally melt when soldering.
Then I installed the two UP-5's and hooked up the loconet cable.
With that it's technically operational.
But now I have a bit of time for some detail work.
I need to install the abutments on each end.
So I went into my tracklaying supplies and found a back of switch ties. These were just the right length and with a bit of staining, they fit right in. I'm going to use some bushed and ground foam to blend them in.
And speaking of bushes, I used some WS clump foilage to add some bushes around the module, mostly to cover senery mistakes that I made.
I'm not sure how much of this I shold add, I don't want to over do it and loose the effect of the grass.
I have finished it to operation, starting with the trackwork:
Since I'm hand-laying the ends, I glued the ties and ballast down first. There is a standard for ballast in Free-mo. You are supposed to use WS fine grey ballast for the first 6" of your mainline on both ends. The club decided to go with light grey, the one color I didn't have. I also didn't like the light gray so I went with their blended gray. I doubt anyone will have a hissy fit over it as the ballast can change color depending on what you use for glue.
It was a bit of a challenge to attach the short pieces of rail to the trestle. When it was removed for the layout the rails were simply cut with a dremel tool. The track on the trestle is Micro Engineering briudge track so I had to carve the spikes away from the first tie so I could slip the rail joiner on. I then soldered the rail to the bridge track. Usually when I hand lay track I spike every 3-4 tie but I spiked almost every tie this time as this will be attached to other modules and needs a bit of extra strength.
Then I wired in the feeders to the track. The nice thing about handlaying is there's no plastic ties to actidentally melt when soldering.
Then I installed the two UP-5's and hooked up the loconet cable.
With that it's technically operational.
But now I have a bit of time for some detail work.
I need to install the abutments on each end.
So I went into my tracklaying supplies and found a back of switch ties. These were just the right length and with a bit of staining, they fit right in. I'm going to use some bushed and ground foam to blend them in.
And speaking of bushes, I used some WS clump foilage to add some bushes around the module, mostly to cover senery mistakes that I made.
I'm not sure how much of this I shold add, I don't want to over do it and loose the effect of the grass.