Wednesday 18th December

Worklist:
Review new cassette switch unit.
Wire-up switch unit.
Prepare new exhibition boards for uncoupling magnets (rout-out recesses underneath).

Laurence running late on grandparent duties and eventually arrived after lunch.

Stephen had made a new case for the cassette switches that included an additional switch for the masons yard feed. The LED's located in the original box will be replaced by surface-mounted LED's glued between the rails (LED's on order).

Post-photos, the case had been spray painted satin black and was ready to be fitted, but when Geoff decided to form the cut-outs for the uncoupling magnets, a discussion quickly started about general train movements around the yard, vehicle movements ditto, building positions, size and type, all of which put everything else on hold and Plan B was adopted - a detailed discussion on the overall design of the boards:

Due to the extent of curved track, the magnet on the main line (to facilitate delivery/collection of wagons to the yard could only go at the transition between the curves, so the proposed road was sketched on. Where was the road actually going? To the edge of the flooded quarry and to a building or the yard, or both. Some boxes were introduced to represent buildings together with some strip wood for the tunnel running behind. Then the engine shed appeared and a taller tunnel panel where it joined the bridge board.

The discussions went on.... 

Geoff retrieved a second hand book  on quarries that he'd just purchased, which had lots of inspiring photos like the one below. The building on the right will (probably) be adopted for the left hand end of the layout ('Fragile' tape) as it offers an entrance into the workshop and two nice gable ends facing the public.

The photo below highlights the transition between the yard and the new engine shed. The hillside/scenery will slope down from the right, comfortably hiding the tunnel track behind and the yard buildings hide the tunnel to the left, but the junction is 'awkward'. Keeping the short, exposed section as low as possible was deemed paramount, so a minimum height tunnel (no hand shunting) could be used. Bringing some of the rock face around the back of the engine shed might look a bit odd, but the central building (photo above) was noted to be on a higher level with an access staircase. The polka dot box indicates such a raised ground level, extending behind the engine shed, with a brick side wall for the stairs at the board joint. It looked promising.

Another photo showed an arch over the main railway that appeared to be a high level track. It was suggested that one of the LH building gables could be designed to have an 18" spoil removal track complete with end-tipping skip wagon, that would act as the scenic end to the layout. One thing we noticed in the book was the liberal use of corrugated iron cladding and roofing, which will also figure highly in our buildings.

We returned to the road layout and changed the delivery point to the left-hand and central buildings, creating one large area for manoeuvring between the access road, yard and quarry edge. This required the magnet to be re-positioned slightly. Safety of the railway at this point was difficult to assess, but Geoff was reasonably happy (someone will no doubt provide appropriate comments in due course!)

Construction of the different tunnel sections were discussed. Geoff had successfully used a sloping roof to a similar tunnel on another layout, but Stephen argued for a flat top box. Geoff's fully cantilevered roof construction was adopted.

After lunch, when Laurence had been fully briefed about the mornings deliberations (which he was very happy to have avoided), timber was sourced and a tunnel section was fabricated.

Extensive discussions about how wagons would be shunted in and out of the yard took place. Geoff favoured using 'scheduled' trains to stop at the yard and drop off empties or collect fulls for onward passage. Rather than use the mainline loco for internal shunting, a small IC unit could be used. Stephen favoured serving the yard from Worton Court. Wagons with large blocks from the quarry could be dropped off in the WC yard and taken down to the masons yard and finished stone collected, as required. There was no agreement, so discussion will continue, but it was great to be putting some 'flesh on the bones' of the new boards.

Wednesday 4th December

Worklist:
Insert small section of track.
Make jumpers for rails at board joints.
Fit wires for point/frog continuity.
Run some trains!

Stephen arrived late having travelled by train (during a guards strike), but it gave Laurence and Geoff a chance to get most of the boards up and ready.

A missing, short section of track on the outer, quarry run was fitted by Geoff, who then moved on to adding tails to points for 'manual' switching of the frogs.

Stephen made up sprung clips from solid wire and fitted them at board joints. Where there were PCB joint strips, he soldered jumpers.

Geoff's next task was on the 8-way plug from the bridge board that normally went to the fiddleyard. This required a temporary socket and feed wires added to connect to the first adaptor board tracks. This went smoothly except that when the connection to the bridge board was tested, there was a partial failure. Everyone's attention was trained (!) on the problem that finally required opening-up the control panel and testing right back to the section switches, without success. After lunch, we tried again and found that the quarry line track running into the tunnel had a broken soldered joint on both rails. Whilst a nuisance, we were heartened by the fact that a lot of investigation work that we needed to perform to establish the wiring for future modifications was completed at the same time.

Once repaired, Stephen and Laurence set-up a train each and ran the first trains from old to new boards and both tracks.

There's a lot to do, but we'd reached a major point in the redevelopment of the layout.