Almost three years since the last post... and probably would have been three years if not for the current health concerns. Peter and I are at home without the ability to stroll far from the door and so we have been working on our layout, see later.
Scruft's Junction has not been idle in the last few years, indeed the layout has travelled far once or twice. A few years back we were asked to take the layout to a S7 Group Open Day and that invitation was a cause of several months of serious work on the baseboards / electrics / scenery as preparation for the event. We have succumbed, finally, to the conclusion that we needed a better form of baseboard supports and so we have invested in a number of Wickes builder's trestles; these are easy to erect and easy to adjust the height of the top of the trestle, downsides are that the items are expensive when there is a need for about ten units and that there is no quiet / simple way to pack the trestles in a family car.
When we started Scruft's the layout was run as 12V DC. Since then we have embraced DCC and changes to the under-baseboard wiring have been less than elegant. So in preparation for the S7 meeting we decided to neaten the wiring and introduce changes ready for the pending extension of the layout, reporting thereof to start later in this topic.
When Scruft's last appeared on WT we had just started using static grass for the scenery - with very mixed results for after a while the appearance was rather like a threadbare cuddly toy as the density of fibres per square inch nose-dived towards zero. A chat with Gordon Gravett brought about a day long tutorial from the Master and Scruft's looks much more verdant, even overgrown in places.
The current "stay at home" advice has meant that we have run out of timber / screws / preservative for fitting out of Peter's workshop and so we have taken the opportunity to set up Scruft's in the new Top Shed. The interior of Top Shed is intended to have a worksurface upon which to erect (part of) a layout and with supports that provide storage space for individual baseboards - so we have room to extend Scruft's. The past week has seen us adding baseboard alignment dowels and fixing bolts to a new baseboard that extends the scenic run between fiddle yard and station from 8 feet to 12 feet. So some photos of Scruft's Junction in its new home.
The station as we were... in our storyline we are at the low level station looking towards Lydney. The main line on the right hand side has a gradient of 1:60 approaching the high level station and that has proved to be too steep for some of our more recent models hence a new board is to be added to reduce the steepness of the climb.
And then the builders moved in:-
In the photo above we have moved about one mile south of the station, towards Lydney, and then turned to face north for the photograph. The board at the far end of this photo is the board at the far end of the previous photo... turned through 180 degrees. In the middle distance is a new 4' board which both extends the scenic run and eases the gradient into the station (the prototype S&W Rly line rises at approximately 1:60 from Lydney Town towards Tufts Junction; in the photo above the line is rising towards the far end of the shed).
Simon (
@Caggers) - maybe you recall making several 4' x 2' baseboards with me when you were living a few miles away? After eight years of storage in the garage those baseboards are coming into their own and are as sound now as when you and I built them (for "sound" think "flat", without "warp or twist").
regards, Graham
