Wednesday 25th February 2026

Housekeeping:

The bridge board was set up and Stephen gave it a close vacuuming. Geoff laid a line of Modge Podge to the outer edges of the bridge roadway and then used shortish electrostatic grass strands to add more texture. Stephen followed using clumps of long grass fibres, hand-trimmed, and placed into patches of glue along the edges. 

Stephen also went over the general layout foliage with more yellow paint splodges to brighten-up the extensive gorse bush flowers (As trialled the previous week).

A discussion took place about whether the check rails should be painted and the answer was - yes. Geoff found some 'Brass blackener' and tried it out on a point, but it was a bit watery. After lunch, another coat was added, but after it had fully dried, it was easily removed using the track cleaning tool. 

The uncleaned checkrails had looked good, so it was decided to try paint, which was easier and quicker to apply. However, this time, Geoff decided to make a specific tool for cleaning the point rails, just the areas where the wheels would run. A strip of thick brass with a flange milled along one edge was made and a strip of emery paper was applied to the recess using double-sided tape. Some adjustment might be required, but the effect was brilliant.

Finally, Stephen finally got around to painting the timbers at the bottom of the retaining wall where they sit rotting in water, a job that was finally ticked off the list.

18th February 2026

This week we tackled one of Geoff's 'annoyances', an unrealistic section of track.

The offending section is about 4-5 foot long and should have been avoided at the time of building the new siding along the front of the station. The left hand joint is also a track break which had to be taken into account.

We decided to leave the sleepers in place and unsolder the rails. The short rails were removed together with the adjacent rails up to more suitable positions at both ends.

Very little work was required to touch-up the sleepers and the job was complete.

The only issue we had was finding suitable replacement rail. John had used some unusual rail so both the rail height and the rail head width had to be matched as best we could.

The stone in the foreground is a marker indicating the centre of the uncoupling magnet under the siding along the front.

We also tackled another of Geoff's bugbears - the foliage across the hill behind the workshop. It has become very tatty, but Stephen did a trial make-over with some yellow paint, touching-up the faded flowers which worked quite well. We'll look into it next week.

11th February 2026

It was decided to check over the area of recent work and have a nice running session as well. Just the original 3-board setup this time, with the fiddleyard attached to the bridge board.

It was a very worthwhile exercise as more gremlins than we'd anticipated had crept into the layout. Even being busy all afternoon, we still ended up with a small list of 'Things To Do'. One plus was that the new switch worked well when operating the crossover area. 

It took a few seconds to realise the Edwards middle track didn't exist in this configuration!

4th February 2026

The first job was to spray paint the plugs white - primer and top coat. After lunch they were dry, and could be 'hot-glued' in place. Later still, the coloured lines were added. It was tricky to match the colours and apply the paint, but it turned out well.

The rest of the day was spent working on the two station boards, as the areas of  'water' were looking a bit dull and dusty. Firstly, an acrylic varnish was tested on the base of the water tower, over painting or adding to the spillages. The seepage at the base of the retaining wall was next and rather than the acrylic, a tin of old varnish was used. It was a bit brown/grubby, but it looked perfect.