Track

The plain track is Hornby code 100 nickel silver semi-flexible and flexible track, joined by fishplates which are used just to hold the track together. Track is secured to the trackbed with track pins, knocked in with a pin hammer.

Points and crossings are Peco code 100 insulfrog and all points are large radius apart from three crossovers constructed from medium-radius points, and a three-way point. I did have two double slips in Pant-y-Fedwen Sidings, but I found that they were not being used to their full potential, so I removed them and replaced them with ordinary points. (The double slips were recycled as part of the scissors crossover in Fiddler’s Yard for a short while, until they were replaced by ordinary crossovers made up of large-radius points.)

After some time I decided I was not happy with the pointwork, mainly because in spite of Peco’s quoted nominal radius, the crossing angle of all their straight-road code 100 points is 12 degrees (equivalent of 1 in 4.7) which is too wide. So I decided to remove the old-style Peco points and replace them with numbered points from other ranges. At the same time I decided to convert from code 100 rail to code 70 or 83. The idea is that crossovers in the running lines will be 1 in 8, the crossovers at Fiddler’s Yard station throat will be replaced by a Shinohara 1 in 6 scissors crossover, and all other points will be 1 in 6, with the exception of a couple of Shinohara 1 in 10 that I bought to see what they were like. All the new points will have live frogs.

I will post a layout plan here when I get around to it.

Point motors are left out in the open, and not waterproofed. After trying electric point motors and failing miserably with them (the armatures rusted and jammed in the coils), I was going to connect all the points to a lever frame by means of the wire in tube method, when I discovered the Del-Aire system. I spent a very pleasant weekend installing the motors and connecting them to the old car tyre that I use as a compressed-air reservoir.

This picture shows some of them installed in the exit to the staging.

(If anyone else in the UK is interested in obtaining these point motors, they are no longer available. However there is an alternative, called E-Z Air which is very similar. and these are available in the UK from Brandbright, in Norfolk.)

Track Cleaning

To clean the track I first use a stiff brush to remove the depredations of the local wildlife, together with an old dustpan brush to remove leaves and windfalls from the fruit trees that the railway runs alongside. If I haven’t run the railway for a while I burnish the rails with one of those very hard track cleaners made of (probably synthetic) rubber (this is definitely required for the first running session of the year, and once a month during the summer). Otherwise I wipe the rails with a cloth, such as those supplied with the Center-line track cleaning car.

Some of the local wildlife that ravage the railway.