Hellier Train Care

Well things are slowly progressing. I have now preped the rest of the first board with a coating of pva and woodland scenics earth coat to give it a nice soil like undercoat, I have added soom woodland scenics sun kissed trees in front of the houses along with some bushes and 2mm static grass, the roads on the board have been surfaced with gaugemaster black scatter, and the pavement has been started with the superquick papers glued to thin strips of balsa. And thanks to a work collegue I have the flashing warning lights for the level crossing running of a 9v battery. Well thats it for now, need to get some security fencing to go round the depot which will be the ratio stuff, also need to put more static grass down and touch up some ballast, will post more as it happens.

Well as most of my track is down, I've started ballasting the track, half the track so far is ballasted, which is one boards worth so I have the remaining board to ballast, once this is done I will be looking to start adding and planning the scenery. Something I have started on already, I have started to create a tunnel that covers half the track of one of the boards, this is something I'll show in future pictures.

Now this is what you call frustration, I purchased 1 roll of woodland scenics track bed, purely because from looking at the length I thought it would be enough, clearly though, it wasn't enough, leaving me with gaps under the left side curve. Fortunately though I got all the other track bed down without too much of a problem. So my next step is to get another pack of track bed, which I will need for the yards anyway so most of is should get used up. Then I'll wire in the power to the bus lead under the board to send a test train round on, this will pick up on any possible problems I may encounter before I take up all the track, go over it all with a track rubber and stick it down. I'll then test it all again to be sure everything is fine before installing the point motors which will be controlled via dcc, I know some people don't like the idea of dcc points but I have no room for a control box and sometimes I'd like to sit down and watch trains go round, c...

So this is how it looks for now, of course nothing is actually fixed in place as most of it will be risen up (thought I'm not sure how some of my locos will manage the inclines so I guess I'll have to see when it comes to it. Now on the left side I'll be using some wood to rise up the track to the required hight, but of course to have motors under the track I'll need to leave gaps in the wood as well as putting a thin sheet over the top to conceal the gap. Despite this I have been temped to use some of the woodland scenics inclines and risers to do the same thing, my only issue with the wood at the moment is that they are not wide enough to fully conceal the under board motors though I can remedy this when it comes to adding the scenery. Initially I was going to make the passing loop removable in one section, though I now believe that that will make things more difficult for me and perhaps my better option would be to forgo that idea. Instead I'm tempted to...