It also has to be considered that these slips are in the nominally hidden sidings, so prototype accuracy is less of a consideration than functionality. There is a double slip on the scenic part of the layout, in the goods yard, also bullhead rail fortunately, but this is a bit of a special case and I shall come to it in due course. There are also two single slips, one bull head (made) and one flat bottom (not made). This brings me back to the comment I made earlier about things becoming more difficult from here on in. I am rapidly running out of baseboards where the track has already been laid.
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Several bare baseboards require cork underlay to be cut and glued. It will no longer be a case of just covering everything with cork either as track bed edges (now included in Templot) and varying depths of track need to be catered for. Then there is ballasting to consider.
I am also rediscovering humps and hollows that I postponed dealing with previously. Some I have dealt with by gluing an extra layer of 1.5mm cork over the hollow and when the glue has thoroughly dried (48 hours at least) sanding down to achieve a flat surface. The high spots are just sanded out. I much prefer to sand cork to Sundeala. The cork dust stays put, whereas the Sundeala does not sand very well. I still had to deal with one sag with additional bracing.
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Yes, it's on a lifting section. It took me a while to suss out what was going on as one diagonal was flat, but the other had a noticeable dip. There is an additional strengthener going from where the clamps are to the block on the middle strut.
This area was a cause for concern as there was some variation between the Templot plan and the resulting baseboards, due to a dimensional error on my part. Those of you who have followed this thread may well remember.
I was reasonably confident that the track as designed and mostly built, would sort of fit, but there was only one way to find out for certain and that was to lay it out on the baseboards.
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The track sections to the right foreground are the last glued down bits.
The errors resulted in some sections of track being too short and replacement pieces being needed.
There was an additional change I reluctantly had to make.
When studying the signal box diagram, the realisation dawned that where I had shifted the goods yard entry crossover to (when foreshortening that end) would not match the signalling as it was. Time for a rethink. The Templot file was suitably altered, but this meant building a new crossover, which should be visible, just where the layout goes off scene. It also meant shifting some of the other goods yard trackwork with accompanying realignments, whilst trying to avoid baseboard joins, of which are a fair few in this area. The new crossover can be seen between the two farest tracks.
It also meant replacing an E-16 crossover with plain track, quite a lot of plain track actually.
This exercise did at least confirm that the track alignment was within acceptable limits, so breath a sigh of relief.
One piece of track I needed to make was very short, 5 sleepers long and reminded of days long past rummaging around in the OO track box looking for the right piece of track to fill that awkward gap in the latest layout.
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The near baseboard was then moved to connect up to the one the other end on my work desk.
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New crossover to the left and the boundary between the scenic and off scene area shown by the stained timbering.
It was then a case of trimming the various lengths of track to fit precisely and then pinning in place before gluing successive lengths in place and waiting for the glue to set before moving on.
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Tony.
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Inspiration from the past. Dreams for the future.