Trackwork at Wollar

The trackwork at Wollar has progressed slowly especially since last Friday morning. I have been battling with something in my eye and got to see an eye specialist this morning to find out that I either have viral conjunctivitus or shingles! I have been stressed recently with almost every facet of life presenting some issue or another. The doctor decided it was shingles so I now have a prescription and a return visit in a month. If I add up the eye wash, a visit to an emergency medical centre and todays visit and prescription I am out of pocket by about $306 until I get back something from Medicare and my health fund. Ok, enough excuses now back to modelling.

I removed the track to expose the baseboard bulges and pondered over how to level them out when I remembered that I had recently purchased a Bosch Multifunction tool with several saw blades. I crossed my fingers and used the flat square ended blade that is about 30mm wide. It worked a treat and I suggest that it could be a standard tool for baseboard work, for instance, I can see that it could also be very useful to cut slots or holes on the baseboard for undertrack magnets, point motors, etc.

I filled any baseboard imperfections and joints with Spakfilla, something I had not previously used for this purpose and found it worked well although it is best left to dry out thoroughly before sanding. I used a sanding block to sand it down and then laid 3mm cork roadbed. I followed this up with Micro Engineering Code 70 track. I didn't have enough of the un-weathered track and had to use a short piece of the weathered track much to my regret. I find that even though I try too remove the weathering back to bare metal I still have some difficulty getting solder to take even though I use flux.

That was where everything was up to when my eye trouble intervened. Tonight I ballasted the track and I used a tool that I have found very useful for levelling out the ballast to sleeper top height. It is an edge painter 'brush' that I found at Bunnings.

Here it is firstly showing the underside bristles.

Now in an action stance, less the copper bar weight I used to keep it upright for the photo (I take time shots and can't keep my hand still enough).

My Z13 now glides along as it shunts the Wollar sidings although I can now see a small dip just before the point in the near track. It is amazing what the camera picks up and shoves in your face on the monitor.

I hope that these two tools might be of some use to someone.