Tag Archives: track

February 2003

Chris, Ian and Steve have been working on a permanent version of Mount Pisgah and have made a wonderful mess sawing up polystyrene sheets. Paul has been finishing Flagstaff Mountain and playing with the trackwork. Steve has continued tracing photos of Susquehanna Street on his computer and some new pages have been added to the website to provide access to them. We have all had a go at weathering our rolling stock and some of this can be seen in the photos. The photos below were taken on February 28th and the open night on March 7th.

Photos show Chris constructing a mountain, the staging yard finished and some weathered coal hoppers.

December 2002

In December the track plan (plotted out in Templot software by Richard Oldfield) was finally delivered allowing us to finalise the location of the track and hence the buildings on the modelled section. More building mock-ups in cardboard were built – especially of the Hotel block as we got better town plans and some photos of the Central Hotel. We also found a good photo of the goods depot. Flagstaff mountain was started from expanded polystyrene sheet. Over Christmas Paul relaid the main lines and much of the yard track according to the plans, but this is not shown in the photos below.

November 2002

In November the staging yard trackwork was adjusted to allow all possible rolling stock (ie. a UP Big Boy!) to pass. ‘Droppers” were soldered to the track to provide power so that trains could be run round on Open Day (24th Nov). The detailed trackwork at the front is being planned for us by Richard Oldfield using Templot software – Last minute modifications were made following the provision of addtional track diagrams by Tom Biery. The locations of the streets were marked out, building mock-ups in cardboard were started and the first mountains were assembled. Trains ran well on the Open Day – note that this is only existing rolling stock and not what we hope to run eventually.

October 2002

In October the cork was laid and the trackwork was laid in the staging yard. This is the easier track as the switches are “Out of the box”. Despite the Merseyside Club exhibition at the end of October, the trackwork was continued round the front to provide running lines for the Open Day on 24th November. This will be replaced when the hand-built switches are ready. The locations for the buildings were provisionally mapped out.