July 17, 2011

Been a little while since anything of substance has taken place in the basement, and I blame it on desires to get outside and to also get out of the city. The camping trip to Waterton was great as was the shopping in Kalispell.

But after no progress in several weeks, I wanted to get something done. While I’m still working on getting a curved turnout built, I figured other benchwork could be worked on.

So Cam came over and we tested, drew track centres using the sweepsticks from fast-tracks and the secured the subroadbed for the trackage between Bryn and Nanaimo. As I mentioned in the last post, I decided to put this little bit of trackage out of main view to provide for a longer distance visually and physically to reinforce the fact Bryn isn’t exactly next door to Nanaimo’s outer reaches. So it’s a bit of a squeeze underneath Parksville, but we got it secured well enough.

Next up is the trackage out of the main helix towards Courtenay. Risers were cut, attached, track boards drawn on and then secured. We got mostly into the south siding switch of Mud Bay before we found the rolling stools a little hard to be sitting on for extended periods of time. Still glad we had them though!

Next weekend will be spent primarily cleaning up as next Monday sees my hot water tank being replaced with a tankless hot water heater. Aside from the gas bill going down a little bit, the biggest benefit with relation to the layout is the removal of a head-knocker of a flue from the HWT. No nod-unders going into the staging area!

I promise to post pictures soon, likely after things have been cleaned up!