The above baseboard was needed before I could finish the track laying on the previous baseboard and across the joint as the baseboard joints nearly always need truing up. Although it has only plain track, the track in this area is far from plain. There's bags of detail in this picture and it is one I shall be referring back to.
Brimsdown015.jpg
Although undated, I would say it was 1961 as some of the details (in particular, the pegs down the middle of the six foot related to the replacement of the Bull head track by Flatbottom underway at that time) appear in other photos dated that year.
Here is an enlargement of the area of current interest, mainly concerning the 5 rod run along the platform face. There are signal wires as well not visible in this shot. The metal strapping across the sleepers is also of interest.
Brimsdown015 detail1.jpg
The salient details are the rodding stools and their timber bases. It is usual for the top of the rodding bases to be level with the top of the sleepers, but here they are evidently higher and I suspect the reason is because there are compensators underneath the rodding and I have marked the edge of the platform opposite each of the three visible in this picture. The top one comes off rod one (furthest from the platform). The middle one (difficult to see) comes off rod five and the bottom one comes off rod four.
It should also be noted that there are several catch pits (drains to you and me) at intervals along the six foot. There is one more or less in the center of the picture although not very obvious, just in front of the third peg.
The positions of all these need to be found as these will need to be planted before the track can be laid and ballasted.
U channel rods are made in 15' or 18'6" lengths (round rods are 16') and I managed to determine that mine were 18'6", which helped tremendously in plotting out the base positions as the bolts for the joining pieces are clearly visible in the pictures. These were marked on the Templot printout
DSCF1264.jpg
and in close up. X marks the spot.
DSCF1265.jpg
The red lines mark the individual lengths of rod. C marks the position of a compensator. 24 is the number of sleepers on each track panel and the red X marks a mistake! The base positions are transferred to the baseboard by hammering Peco track pins through the printout into the baseboard.
The track panels are then removed from the printout and re-positioned on the cork. Any mistakes can simply be hashed out.
DSCF1267.jpg
I needed 10mm long strips for these bases.
I chose to make my low bases out of half thickness Crossing timber strip and the high bases out of thick Crossing timber strip. For the ramping up and down I simply glued 1, 2 or 3 layers of 8 thou card (a 1/4 of the difference) to the underside of some thin Crossing timber strip. These correspond to the numbers in this picture.
DSCF1266.jpg
This is what they look like glued into place.
DSCF1268.jpg
It is vitally important that any adjustment of rail lengths for final fitting is carried out before fixing the positions of the rodding bases on the cork,
as there is not much room for error and this is particularly the case if the base happens to coincide with a rail joint as there is negligible clearance and once the base is fixed in position it may stop the track from being correctly placed later.
DSCF1269.jpg
I also needed to cut some catch pit covers from 40 thou plasticard and paint them concrete coloured before gluing into place.
This is what the area looked like minus track
DSCF1270.jpg
and with track.
DSCF1272.jpg
The joint was then re-cut with a scalpel.
DSCF1271.jpg
A close up of the ramped area.
DSCF1273.jpg
This means I now have another baseboard in the wiring queue.
However as I still had two baseboards in need of cork, I decided to tackle that next.
DSCF1274.jpg
This is an area I had put off due to it involving the lifting flap and the change in level for the goods yard.
The task actually didn't seem that bad once under way the current state of play is.
DSCF1275.jpg
There remains some filling of dips with cork and much sanding to achieve the levels I require, but things really are beginning to look promising and progress most encouraging.
Regards
Tony.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Inspiration from the past. Dreams for the future.