A weeks worth of work (1)

Week one is done. It's been quite a productive week, and I think I'm pretty much where I planned on being.
The baseboards are constructed. The central APA box for the model and the two fiddle yard boards. Construction of them went well and I have a much better looking product than I expected.

Joins between baseboards are level

They fit together squarely and snugly.

As I don't have much stock and this is a small layout with short trains, train handling will be by individual train cassettes.
The track was cut and soldered together as one unit. with dropper wires soldered in place. The track is not going to be laid until I get the back scene fixed in the cabinet. The backscene has been ordered from Tracksidescenery.com.

The track plan. Full size.

The locations of the Kadee uncouplers was decided on. I have a selection in stock and I used under the track, in track, delayed action and non-delayed on the scheme. They fit in place well and seem to work.

Uncouplers

The final task I've started on this week is the construction of the mine itself. As I mentioned in an earlier post this was going to be the Banta Modelworks mine. But as I have no experience of making wooden kits and this one needs cutting and shaping to fit, as well as being made to work to load the gondola cars. I decided make my interpretation of the kit using my favourite material. Good old cardboard. The card structure will be covered with downloaded texture papers from Clever models. As I'm working to a deadline I want to be working with materials I'm comfortable with.

Cardboard structure model worktop.

The better things progress, the more my confidence increases. If you're interested in following day by day reports you can find those on my Model Railways of Ian Holmes Facebook page.