Hellier Train Care

  Well, the ballasting is now more or less complete (places that don't have it at the moment, probably won't ever have it) There's a few problems yet to be solved (such as why after 12 hours a clean track need cleaning to allow you to run anything).  As you may be able to guess I am now starting on the landscaping of my layout, as with everything it will be modular  I glue triangles or card to what will be the inner tracks tunnel wall which will help reinforce the roof when fully assembled. The tunnel mouth is next, where I take a series of measurements from the track and loco heights to craft a twin track tunnel mouth wide enough for two passenger trains to happily go through. Although not pictured I have put reinforcements on the top of the tunnel mouth for the tunnel roof, I have also put extra reinforcements on one edge of the tunnel wall to allow me to link the mouth and wall together. Not quite sure how I will finish the tunnel mouth ...

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.

So I keep telling myself that I'm not going to be using settrack on my layout due to the issues it causes if anything with a short wheelbase is run over it (mainly shunters with 0-6-0 or 0-4-0 wheel arrangements) But as happens I see that I can add more track to part of the layout and this track, due to the geometry, has to be set track, so I set about making it live, but of course I refuse to use Hornby's DCC staples, so I set about making my own modifications.   The back of  a Peco settrack point, as out the box   Most of the webbing cut away along one section.   Small sections of wire soldered to join the required rails   View from top once installed on track.  Now although they may be slightly more intrusive at this point, they should more or less disappear when the track is ballasted.