Seething, IL Updates
December 2021 Update
With my return to the office, the 'home office' has returned to its rightful place as my hobby room so I decided to rescue Seething from the loft after being most miffed at heavily modified Pacers built for Pendleshaw being unable to move themselves.
I decided to revisit the previously talked about extensions to both boards. These were built from 9mm ply on spare skirting board wood for a frame and were, quite frankly, ridiculous. Therefore I decided to rebuild them in a more socially acceptable manner, using 3x1 timber, fortunately I was able to reuse the ply tops.
I've picked up a few more items of stock - 2 cabooses (cabeese? cabii?) and a switching loco, all in Rock Island livery. The caboose models are different from each other, one is a kit, the other rtr, from Athearn and Roundhouse respectively. I've been enjoying building the kit, taking my time to paint the interior and roof to give a bit of life to it. I'll do the same painting on the rtr one.
I decided to revisit the previously talked about extensions to both boards. These were built from 9mm ply on spare skirting board wood for a frame and were, quite frankly, ridiculous. Therefore I decided to rebuild them in a more socially acceptable manner, using 3x1 timber, fortunately I was able to reuse the ply tops.
I've picked up a few more items of stock - 2 cabooses (cabeese? cabii?) and a switching loco, all in Rock Island livery. The caboose models are different from each other, one is a kit, the other rtr, from Athearn and Roundhouse respectively. I've been enjoying building the kit, taking my time to paint the interior and roof to give a bit of life to it. I'll do the same painting on the rtr one.
Lockdown Update
As part of the trans-atlantic change to the layout, I've decided to extend the baseboard at each end by 12" each. Originally I was only going to extend the fiddle yard board, to provide support for the slightly over hanging sector plate, but decided to add another extension to the other board to keep it symmetrical. Or maybe because I had 2 pieces of plywood the exact size in my shed...The obvious benefit of this extended length (now 8ft) is slightly longer trackwork and train formations. The fiddle-yard extension is in place, extra track laid for the headshunt and wired up. I have also extended the rear siding and sector plate approach tracks.
When Seething was Seething Lane, the entrance to the fiddle yard was hidden by an overbridge, which I have done away with, to be replaced by...an overbridge. To be fair, the original was a stone and plate girder affair, the new one is a truss girder structure. This from an old Airfix kit, which I have modified with new fillet iron work to represent crudely welded repair patches.
Work will continue on the rest of the layout over the next few weeks and months
When Seething was Seething Lane, the entrance to the fiddle yard was hidden by an overbridge, which I have done away with, to be replaced by...an overbridge. To be fair, the original was a stone and plate girder affair, the new one is a truss girder structure. This from an old Airfix kit, which I have modified with new fillet iron work to represent crudely welded repair patches.
Work will continue on the rest of the layout over the next few weeks and months
Fiddle-yard board extension
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Extended rear siding
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Extended sector plate approach roads
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The bridge replacement bridge
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Points Arising...
Not happy with the looks of reliability of Peco points, after coming across this document I decided to take a knife to my points. I wont go into detail as the link covers all that needs to be done very well, but to sum up I removed the plastic sleepering around the tiebar area (photo 1), and replaced these with single-sided copperclad strip (photo 2). The first two photographs show the before and after effect. I also added soldered links between the running and stock rails, taking away the reliance on the point blades for power conductivity, as per the third photograph. Time will tell if these modifications make a difference, but one paint and power are applied I will hopefully notice a difference.
