Track Plan

In preparation for the show at Woking, which is just a little over a month away now, Himself has begun laying some track in the fiddle yards.

It's intended to be a semi-permanent arrangement to get us through the first few shows.

The sidings are roughly in the positions we intend them to be, but for now they will be dead ends, whereas the eventual plan is to have them come together into headshunts at the far end to allow us to run round trains and avoid having to lift the locomotives off the track.

With 10 axle Garratts that is not a very desirable state of affairs!

You can see in these pictures how the track enters on a large balloon loop before fanning out into the sidings with an extra headshunt running parallel to the 'main line', where Conway Castle is sitting.

We'll probably use this as a stabling point for locomotives which can run onto the rear of incoming trains ready for the return journey, in turn releasing the incoming engine which take its place in the headshunt.

It's a lot less complicated than the traverser arrangement we employed on Dduallt and should be an idiot-proof solution while we're on the learning curve of the first exhibitions.

It needs to be!