A survey of the damage sustained in the "bike accident". It could've been a lot worse. Only a couple of small pieces of the refuge island, and one of the strips of capping off a wing wall are currently "missing", expected to be found on the floor of the garage once I can clear enough stuff to search for them.
The upside of this is that another problem has been solved for me. As built, all locos and rollingstock in the collection would traverse the bridge OK with the exception of deep-flanged Lima stuff (expected, since I had used rail stripped from a piece of N scale flex track) and my Trax Z.13. The Z.13 would drop inside the gauge at one point, so the tyres must be fairly narrow compared with everything else. Presumably, the use of a Kadee coupler gauge for setting the track gauge had caused a degree of inconsistency along the length of the bridge. The difficulty lay in removing the rails, which had been secured with a drop of araldite on EVERY transom. Well, both rails were loosened sufficiently at one end (four transoms) by the bike impact for me to be able to work my way carefully along and prise them off. Only two more transoms came adrift in this process.
Rectification work will include finding / replacing the missing bits of timber, scraping off the araldite from rails & transoms, then relaying the rails. Any ideas for a cheap, easily made gauge would be welcomed. Finally, the wing wall assemblies will be re-attached.
Once re-assembled, I'll work on some sort of concrete base for the bents.
That's it for tonight.
No comments:
Post a Comment