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Amblethorpe


chris
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Today was a bit of a do or die day. I needed to get about 7 meters of baseboard installed and at this time of year I couldn't get away with leaving the job half done, the felt had to be in place because the weather could prevent work for days or weeks.

I'd worked out that the three baseboards would have to go in as one, including an embankment section. They would have to be braced, joined and then fletted. I spent about half an hour offering things up to each other and working out what would go where. While doing this I realised that my Aluminium girders would probably be all that was needed to join the boards together so I drilled extra holes for screws to go through at the board ends. Then I decided that I did have enough daylight and went for it.

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I was able to put the first bracing girder in with the first two boards upside down, working with the aid of gravity is much easier. However this had to be flipped over and put in place before the third board and the other two girders could be installed. All the boards, including the embankment were constructed by 2pm. At this stage the boards were sat on the shelf brackets, but not screwed in place.

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With the clock ticking and only 3 hours of daylight left I cracked on with the roofing felt. I was short on adhesive, but I had plenty of staples! I had to pull the boards as far away from the fence I could get them to give me just enough room to get my staple gun in. I'll make a note in the roofing felt thread that skimping on adhesive isn't a great idea. I got it all down, but it's not up to my usual "billiard table" standard.

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The boards could then be slid back up against the fence and screwed in place. I bit more sticking down of the felt on the embankment finished off the job.

But with 7 extra metres of baseboard to play with, I couldn't resist. I through down 6 lengths of flex and ran the 153 out. With very little daylight I decided that the longest length of track I've ever had required my longest train, so here's a picture of my Grand Central 125 on Phase 3 of Amblethore.

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And you may just be able to make out a East Coast 225 passing at speed in the background.

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Fantastic progress on the layout. Is it planned with return loops at the ends or will you go all the way around the garden with lift outs at the doors?

Really like the added bonus of having a real line just over the fence. Who needs dcc sound decoders when you can have the real thing. :)

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The rules for Amblethorpe are simple, if you go passed the end of the garden then you are allowed on. This is meant to limit me in the stock I can purchase. The problem is that living South of York just about anything can turn up.

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Thanks for all the positive comments chaps.

Yesterday was one of those day where weeks of preparations paid off in a "big bang" of work. The shelf brakets went up months ago. I'd painted the baseboards weeks ago. The girders had been predrilled, the roofing felt sorted and I'd spent every hour I could grab during the week getting the embankment slope ready. This meant I could really crack on, but also when I came across a problem I could solve it quickly because I already knew which was the right saw to use on Aluminium and which size drill bit was needed. It was a good day.

Ian, Winter was a big motivation for me, I wanted all that wood and felt out of the shed so I'd have the space in there when it gets too cold to be in the garden. My house is very visible form the railway. Amblethopre is much harder to spot.

traingeekboy, the sounds of the railway are rather good. All work stops when I hear something different approaching. At the moment I have the treat of the Rail Head Treatment Trains (leaf busters) going by with Class 20's "Top and Tail" and I'm not going to get bored of them anytime soon. And yes, Phase 4 will complete the loop, well that's the plan...

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Ahhh.... quirky solutions to problems are the stuff of railroad legend!

When I was a tiny child, and yes I do remember the journey even though I was perhaps 2 and a half, we rode the Zephyr from Denver to chicago before moving back to Italy. during the journey there was a monumental flood and we spent a night on track with water all the way up to the sleepers. The next morning they routed our train onto branch lines of other companies. The zephyrs just appeared in little sleepy towns that had never seen such a thing before; in order to get around sections of washed out track and bridges.

A few years ago I was looking at a book on the rock island and they had a shot of the Burlington Zephyr on Rock trackage. The year was right for it to be the same event. I might have been on the train in the picture. Which proves there is a broken rule to justify anything on a model railroad, he he he.

I have a weakness for electrics because we don't have them here. Got any pics of things like class 87?

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Thanks Chris for satisfying my curiosity!

Traingeekboy,

I will have to scan some photos of 87s and other electrics I took at Euston in the late 1980s and post them. I recently collected a box of photos that had been in a cupboard at my parents. I had been promising to take the for the last 12 years since I moved out :D

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Glorious morning here in York, but the day never really warmed up. Frequent breaks were required to get warm with a cup of tea.

After the big bang last Sunday, today was mainly tidying up the loose ends. I got a lot of felt down in a hurry last week and that required a trim. I needed to finish off felting the last 4cm of baseboard which had been left uncovered :!: and I also "plumbed in" the Skaledale bridge. That completed the job.

I did have a running session for 20 mins or so, but I have a intermittent fault on the accessory decoder which drives most of my points, so my fun was somewhat curtailed. I'll have to get to the bottom of that problem soon, but I think I'll get the heater from the loft and put it in the shed first.

With the baseboard is in place I can consider running cables underneath it. I'll have a track bus coming out from the shed, but I also what to instal a mains cable from the conservatory to the shed so I don't have to run an extension lead out each time I want to work or play in the shed and garden.

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Nice work Chris and some good progress recently. I've enjoyed looking at the photos which give a good idea of what you've been up to. I'm almost settled in now so hopefully I'll be able to keep uo to date with all that's happening.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The fog didn't lift from the Vale of York today so not a great day to be out in the garden.

I want to get a mains power feed permanently installed into the shed to save me having to run out an extension lead each time I need more than battery packs can supply. The baseboard of Phase 3 gives me the perfect route with it running from 1 cm away form the conservatory directly to the shed. Todays job was to create a cable trough underneath it.

My salvaged aluminium T girder had been used to brace the boards in place of the Gypframe I had previously purchased, but the Gypframe was still ideal for the job of troughing. The challenge was to come up with the best way of fixing it in position. On Phase 1, where the Gypframe was preforming a bracing role, I'd used blocks of wood to fix it to the boards, but these did get in the way when I fed cables along them. I decided that I would attach them to the bottom of the T girder using nuts and bolts left over from my aluminium shelf brackets. This was going to be difficult as it would require a lot of accurate drilling in inconvenient locations. The bottom of the T wasn't helping as it splits into two as can be seen here.

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I sat down with off cuts of T and Gypframe and tried to work out how to position them. I came up with a strategy for drilling and bolting, but as I played around with these two bits of metal I made a wonderful discovery, the Gypframe would slot into the bottom of the T and lock on place without the need for any bolts, perfect.

This simplified the job massively and within a couple of hours I had a cable trough with my bus cable laying in it.

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It only takes two minutes to run an extension cable out and another couple to put it away, but that is a chore when you only need power for one minute to drill one hole. At this time of year the fixed supply will be very helpful, I can throw the switch in the conservatory and the lights in the shed will come on making trips to the shed in the dark a lot easier.

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