A Minor Setback, Progress, and some Spring....Ermm Winter Cleaning.

I managed to lose another point this week. Before any aspersions are directed toward Peco please be aware that I choose not to wire up my electrofrogs, installing them as plain insulfogs instead, so in time some loss occurs. Between 10 years of "Cudgewa" and 4 years of "Glenburn" using approx. 40 points I have had only 3 fail, so providing one is ready to replace them there's no big deal, other than that sinking feeling on Friday night when one is looking forward to running one's trains! I was particularly fortunate as can be seen above, the point was at the limit of overhead wiring, and most of the ballast chose to remain in situ so replacement was simply a drop-in. (Not sure how to straighten that picture though).

For those who keep an eye on "Glenburn's" rolling stock developments you will know I have spent a fair bit of my recent modelling time converting a RTR loco into a VR V Class. That project having come to a temporary stop while I await some parts, I commenced the next section of scenic work, the long cutting on the Up side of Faith St. This cutting is based on the first section of the prototype cutting that starts just beyond the Up end of Hawthorn Station and continues toward the Yarra crossing. This was a favourite area when I lived in Melbourne. I had stockpiled white polystyrene for a while for this kind of work but culled it a few months ago as I had too much......of course, on arriving at this point found I had culled just too much.......So, I looked into whether I would use cardboard formers for the cutting as can be seen above. Not thrilled with this approach, I decided to use some Noch foam walling that I had spare and cut and bent it to shape then applied a thin cover of polyfilla. This method was much simpler and cleaner than I expected and I will use it again. Much more work to go here as you can see, but it's a nice change to be doing something as rough and robust as this after the recent precision required for the V.

For some time I have also been meaning to give the layout its' first decent clean, it not having been dusted or vacuumed, nor the track cleaned for the last three and a half years. So for the first time in the layout's history all stock has been removed as can be seen above and the cars etc. removed also for a good Winter Spring clean. The list is the things I know need fixing, which grows as one moves around knocking bits off while cleaning, unfortunate friendly fire! Glenburn Rd hasn't been this quiet before. I'll give the rolling stock the once over also before restoring it all back to an operating semblance of the interwar years.