Maintenance activities begin ...

I've completed the first of my winter maintenance activities - repainting all the little people who populate Beamish town.

When the weather gets a bit wrmer and drier (?) , I'll be repairing some buildings and replacing some split logs used to conatin the trackbed.

CVR Indoors MKII

I've now got power in my garage, this provides an opportunity to put a layout of some form there; so I've decided to move my CVR 'Indoors' G scale mini-layout to the garage and enlarge it to provide somewhere to run and test trains if the weather isn't suitable.

So far I am in the middle of building the 'baseboard' tables for it.

The opportunity for the future is to join the layout in the garage to the one in the garden - mind you thats a fair way off !

Car Transporter completed

Another little project completed, my car transporter wagon - it took some time to find a suitable load which wasn't too heavy (as some diecast cars are).

A little lite running ...

Took the opportunity of the nice weather today to have a nice running session. Some picture below.

Tidy Time

With all the rain we've been having recently the little weeds have been getting rather large - so today I've beeing pulling them all up and putting down weed killer where needed. In the farm area of the layout I left some of the ground cover weeds in place - they look ok with the cows and horses ....

Beamish Town, the weeds had grown in between the floor tiles I use for roads, now they are removed it looks so much better ...

Control Box finished

Having layed all the wires in place and connected up to the track, next was the job of putting in the switches and power connector for the controller. Fiddly but worthwhile; all tested and working OK - nice to have train waiting in the loop and one running by.

Control Box and Wiring up ...

I eventually found a suitable sized control box - a weather proof metal letter box. Nice opening door, the controller I use sits inside quite nicely. Piccies below show it in place and the conduit for the switch and power wire layed out ready, lots of annoying work to take up of paving slabs to keeps the conduit out of sight.

In the station area the conduit will sit under the ballast. The track has to be taken up to attach the switch and power wires, so a bit of work to do - I wish I'd done it when I layed the track orginally.