July 29, 2011

I suppose this post will also end up including stuff done last week as well as tonight. Apologies in advance for any potential confusion…

While Cam waits ever so patiently for me to finish building the two curved #8 turnouts for the south Parksville industrial spurs, we managed to get the subroadbed built and installed for Mud Bay siding and then all the way around the peninsula, ending just shy of Buckley Bay. Nice thing with this is the fact we incorporated a grade into the hidden portion of the trackage and managed to do it without introducing reverse superelevation like we did with the hidden loop of track in the peninsula helix. We were concerned we’d have to go with ready rod on all three decks because of that, but we found a solution: pre-stress the pieces and voila! We’re level, just how we wanted it!

Over the past few nights on my own, I’ve been laying down cork on the fixed portions of benchwork, polishing off the first of what I’m sure will be many boxes of Midwest cork. Turnout areas are fun… Thank goodness “ballast hides a multitude of sins!”. I’m still really impressed with using contact cement for this task!

Cam has also been puttering away at the trackplans, adjusting things here and there for the changes we’ve introduced. He’ll be showing them to me tomorrow for approval and then we’ll get them scanned in. I’ll post them on the trackplans page once I get the PDF’s.

We also found a few pictures posted on the railfan.net vancouver island forum of the Vancouver Island Gas spur from 1986. Picture an LPG tank parked at the bumper post on top of a trestle two stories up… We are most thankful for the interesting vantage of this industry and we’ll be trying our best to model this spur accurately. And when it comes to spotting cars there, the crews will definitely not be allowed to kick the car down to the trestle!

As I’m on my own for the next couple weeks, I’m hoping to get a decent amount of work done… I suppose I should head back down and see what I can do…

Cheers,
Jon