What does on say? What does one do? Well apart from the obvious; stay safe and don’t go out, it is hard to comprehend the current state of the world. As I said to a neighbour the other day who’d of thought that in 2020 we would be experiencing the types of restriction that leads us to remain tethered to our homes. Thankfully for us band of railway modellers we have a almost limitless supply of distraction to aid us in these uncharted times. There’s so many things we can be getting on with. It’s not just the layout, for those that have them, but anything from finishing off that kit to even sorting out the tool draw/store. I think this is the first time in probably in more than a decade that I now know exactly what I have in my collection of plastic boxes spread around the estate..
But as the days seem to merge into one and the nights get shorter, I find myself wanting to do more, which is probably the inverse of every one else. But there is some constriction in that thinking ahead to the project I’m on at the moment I may run down of supply chain issues, namely getting hold of paints. Some of the model stores are still open via mail order, but I really want to support my local ones as who knows what the model shop landscape will be like once this has all receded. I truly hope that it isn’t the Armageddon that the media is portraying but I suspect that there will be casualties, let’s hope just not too many.
So now that I have more time what will I do with it? Well I am desperately trying not to go off piste and start a bunch of projects that I have thinking about for a long time but I do want to keep the snowball running downhill. One such project is a track build for a friend that was meant to be used in a layout that was going to come to fruition this June and now that all modelling and real events are cancelled until further notice, it seemed that my drive to get completed in time for my friend to move his project to its conclusion evaporated almost over night. However now with this extended period of solitude that it would be the best time to start this off and get it over to him so he has his own distraction from current events
It’s an interesting process of noodling together the constraints of building hand laid track with a very non standard crossing. No I know that this is completely non prototypical and I can hear the sharpening of the pitch forks over the purists encampment, but hey I have never thought it mattered. But the process goes through the base to build on the non standard crossings and the need to manipulate these sharp angles. The blessing is that nothing bigger than four coupled loco (yes there will only ever be one Peckett tank loco running on this micro layout, but its still a bit of a challenge.
So I am trying to ease myself into it by setting myself a chunk of time a day to work on it, whether that be the planning part or the building part. I have only come round to the progress by small bites in the relatively recent past, as someone who has always be a leave it to the last minute kinda guy but I am finding this is helping with my attention.
This is going to be something that rumbles along and provides that distraction, or maybe a pallet cleanser that one needs when the days stretch into the distance and there is no longer a deadline or even reason to need to finish it. But I did promise to do it and so I will. I will probably record progress for prosperity over on the Youtube channel but I will pull together the efforts into one video that will appear once my friend has it and is happy with it.
Until then hope you are enjoying any modelling time you have and stay safe.
As Kenney Rodgers once said “You gotta know when to hold and when to fold” or words to that effect. But as it’s been some years since I’ve built handlay and that shows with this first attempt. It works in a fashion but it’s no oil painting and I was told some time ago by a friend that it usually takes a couple of goes to get it right and then it’s like falling off a bike. It’s definitely been good to treat this build as a sacrificial and not get too worked up about it being perfect from the start and as would will see I have left flux and a number of joints unsoldered joints knowing that this would not be laid to a baseboard.
In planning the track for the diorama I needed to find out what the height differentials were between the types I am looking at using. In order for the scenic section to look somewhat realistic I decided on using some Peco Code 55 FS Concrete Sleepered track and then was contemplating a mixture of 
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