Develop the bridge/mine entrance/sidings area a bit more
Play trains
Finish the central board joint pin assembly.
Stephen & Geoff got the bridge board out and reviewed Geoff's work reinforcing the back of the bridge/rod structure - an excellent job. Geoff had come to the conclusion that having a cutting on the outside of the roadway wasn't practical after all.
A hill profile was sketched on the backboard and a scrap of ply was shaped and inserted between the backboard support fin and the existing front wall. The void was filled with crumpled newspaper to get a feel of the resulting landscape - it looked good.
(When firmly compacted, the newspaper balls will form a good, light-weight sub-base for the Modroc plaster covering that we will apply to form the hill surfaces.)
A piece of grey card was marked with a tunnel mouth - first, the same size as the main line, but then reduced a bit - more befitting for a mine. How to fit the mouth/arch into the scenario we had created was not an easy job, but when Geoff struck a diagonal line across over the top of the arch, it suddenly looked right. A few cuts, scores and folds, and we had our mine entrance. More balls of paper filled-in another void and allowed the rest of the rock/wall interfaces to be assessed/discussed. The sloping coping made all the difference - a dynamic transition from low-to-high. We had an attractive, realistic solution!
How the road and its side walls joined the backboard was discussed. The difference in wall height still looked a bit odd, but could be overcome by cutting the inner wall back and fitting a fence or hedge in its place, as the early sketches for the area - further development required. Whether the backboard is cut down to the proposed road level, or the road height increased would also be resolved by experimentation. The steepness of the road still looks exciting.
The first train to run up the mine line and into the fiddle yard was a log train. Using the main station yard as a mustering area for supply trains to the mine has become an interesting addition to the running roster. The siding is designated as Worton Minerals property and the longer mine adit line provides excellent scope for shunting. We'll fit the sign back into a suitable location, in due course.
Something none of us had done before was work with cassettes in a fiddle yard. We've seen different methods used at shows and can now see the reason for them. We'll have to develop our own way of working, as we go along.
PS: The central alignment pins worked perfectly.
