Garn Tidy up

Although you wouldn't notice it there's been a little tidying up on Garn. So a couple of photos:
The Egger works diesel conversion.

The brake van. The chimney isn't so glaring in the flesh as it is here. Parkside Dundas sides, scratch everything else and a Peco 10' wagon chassis.

Garn.

Although you'd never notice it, the last few days have been spent fiddling with Garn - replacing lost ballast and touching up the green bits. Surprisingly it's five years old (or bits of it are) and glues dry and there is falling off and lifting going on.
I've never been that happy with the layout as a whole. For some reason it doesn't have the feel that I intended and I have thought about scrapping and re-building or even incorporating it into a round-the-room set-up. Neither of these thoughts will come to much.
It has two shows this year - Amberley and Worthing; after that? Well I may bin or sell.

T'other end.

Railcar

Set Garn up today to try and do a little tidy-up work pre-Amberley. While raking around in the loft for a few bits I came across this. Built, but never completed around the same time as Wood End from a Meridian Models Ashover coach and a Lifelike GP 18 mech. It didn't figure on the roster for the complete U-shaped layout as the clearences were a bit tight. The bridge exit on Garn however was built to accommodate it... but still it languishes unloved.

Noted that the current RM article on the Ashover doesn't mention this kit.

Prototype for everything dept.

I've always been very anti - the small layouts that have the scenic-break as an improbable tunnel that slides sideways with a line running in front. However here is the exception. From Nigel Hill's extensive Scandinavian collection. (more available via the sidebar)
Now for some work on Garn.

Track for Rhiw

Basic track-laying.
I haven't used standard Peco 16.5 track for a long, long time. I um'd and ahh'd about how to approach this for quite a while; what track gauge. Handbuilt? Finescale? In the end it came down to a mix of practicalities and economics.

 I had some Peco track and points in the loft that came from an American layout that I built mid 90s. So it seemed daft not to use what I had, and daft to spend the extra time and money on hand-built when the stock I'm using is designed for use with commercial track.

So to start with I thought to put a single line through the fiddle yard after working out previously the maximum train length which would be 29" (Class 37 and 3x VDAs). This is quite tight and means I had to use the small Y and small radius point. The LH end is copperclad sleepers glued and pinned with short lengths of code 100 rail. This way I'm not relying on the Peco plastic to hold the rail at the baseboard edge; and it's adjustable.

I'm struck by how chunky and forgiving this all is compared to the code 60 or 80 with the 009.