(Well, the first 50mm screw actually.)

I have actually been a supporting member of the Welsh Highland Railway Society for several years, but my contributions in rebuilding that line have been purely financial rather than participatory. This was for several reasons: a) the GRA and I had a new house to refurbish first, so we couldn’t spare the time; b) if you’d seen the bodged mess we’d made of the house, you really wouldn’t want to let us near your railway. To this, I can now add, or at least confirm, reason c) it’s too much like hard work.

Somehow, the weather mostly held off this weekend and I found sufficient free time to put down not just one length of track but all the track required for the first phase of the plan: six yards. (It helps when you ignore all the DIY elsewhere in the house.) Although at one point, I had to distract the navvies with some toy wagons to prevent them redistributing the ballast all over the garden. It’s a shame, because small people who are closer to the ground are much better suited to this type of work than old men with bad backs and knees.

As you can see, my experimental/theoretical method of anchoring the track worked out in the end. Had to abandon the washer idea due to clearance, but I finally discovered that the part I originally wanted to use but couldn’t locate is called a “75mm mending plate” (the Screwfix website is handy for identifying odd bits of ironmongery). B&Q sell them, in bags of twenty. As used, they allow some lateral and longitudinal movement for expansion, although there is a minor danger of sufficient movement to either foul the flangeway or disconnect the rail joints. We’ll see. They’re a bit ugly, but ballast can hide a multitude of sins (e.g. train suicides).

More by luck than judgement, I even got the curve laid successfully, despite not starting at that point (somehow, it happened to join up with the existing lengths correctly). Next time: lay the curves first, then you can cut the straight lengths to meet up with them.

The curve has actually turned to be my favourite feature so far. As you can see, to maintain the level it ended up in a cutting, which looks quite attractive. Haven’t done anything to stabilise the soil yet though; some relatively thin stone slabs (slate?) might be nice. (It’s at this point that I remember with regret the large stack of spare roofing slates we left behind at our last house.)

The track has turned out not so wiggly as I would have preferred, but then given that I slapped it down fairly quickly, it isn’t entirely straight either. It’s more or less close to level; a bit of brick-wiggling sorts out most gradients. Quite tricky to find the level between the soil, the edges of the trench, the brick and the gravel though. In places, the soil threatens to spill down over the tracks; in others, the gravel spreads out over the soil. One thing that this brought home to me: the larger scales are much more appealing. SM-32 is satisfyingly chunky to look at and feels more like “real” track, especially laid outdoors. I never felt this way about N gauge (doctor).

After completion, I was able to successfully push a couple of lightweight plastic wagons around the track. There were a few problems due to leaves (which are obviously going to be a nuisance, and we haven’t even had the major fall yet) and bits of 10mm gravel in the flangeway, but the state of the track itself did not cause any derailments, nuclear spills or passenger carnage. This counts as a roaring success by the standards of a Rixon project.

For an encore, I even figured out what was wrong with my cheapie battery-powered loco from eBay. (Loose gear wheel on an axle; needs some glue.)

Now to find some rolling stock…