Hello everyone, to keep me motivated I feel inclined to document my latest model railway project. This is going to be an O gauge German Era III shunting layout with the classic inglenook track plan. If you look at the photo below you may think it doesn't look very 'classic inglenook' and the more observant among you may notice the OO track with a very British SR carriage on it but hear me out. I am building this new layout on a section of baseboard that used to be part of my existing OO British 1940s layout. This section sort of stagnated for various reasons, and I could never really decide what it was going to be. So, I have taken up all the track, buildings and landscaping and starting again with the O gauge. The OO track on the right is newly laid and when finished will be sort of a fiddle yard and hidden behind the O gauge buildings. The plan is to have train detection sensors and auto-uncoupling, so that locos can be run around without having to see them. I use Lenz digital controllers for the point motors on the main part of the OO layout, but for this section I am tempted to keep it simple with wire in tube control. Otherwise, I will have to use some sort of digital point position device. Going back to the O gauge track, at the moment it is a double track because I am experimenting (playing) with the new loco. Eventually it will be a single track with two turnouts, but I won't be able to do anything with that until I get all the OO gauge track down. I had hoped to finish that today, but the last cutting disk on my 'Dremel' broke so I have nothing to cut the flexitrack with. Time to finally buy a Xuron I think!
The postman has just been and delivered my eBay purchases. Can you believe I have gone through life without a pin vice and Xuron cutters? Less surprising I think are the track screws. There seems to be a difference of opinion on these, and I have never used them before. I have noticed that a common method with German O gauge modellers is to use screws with large washers between sleepers to hold track down prior to ballasting. The benefit of this seems to be that you don't drill holes in the sleepers, but I am assuming that the holes will be easily disguised later.
A little late to this thread but have you considered gluing the track down. I have stuck my O gauge track down with PVA used neat, then laid the track and pinned it down with drawing pins between the sleepers and once the glue had dried I remove the drawing pins, no holes drilled or needing filling and rock solid. Cheers, Pete.
I have used a similar technique with OO track, but I used map pins. One reason for going for the screws is to keep the points in place while a fiddle about with the flexitrack, I will probably only use about 4-5 screws in total. I am still not 100% sure of the track position yet, so using the screws makes it easier to reposition it.
I pin mine down with Gaugemaster pins, very sharp with a perfectly flat head, a bit like me. Once it is ballasted the pins can be removed but I don’t bother.
I do what Pete (jakesdad13) does. Neat PVA and a few pins to locate the track, but not through the sleepers. I then place weight on the rails until the PVA has cured. Cheers, Gary.
As I have paid a fiver for a bag of screws, I decided to at least give them a go. They are rubbish! So back to the map pins for me. I had hoped to get all the track laid this afternoon, but wiring up the points took longer than expected. This is the first time I have used electrofrogs, and at £60+ for a set of points I didn't want to begger it up. Plus today was the first warm sunny day of the year and it was a waste to spend it indoors apparently. I was planning to use manual point control, but my love of gadgets has taken over so I am going to use Cobalt iP digital point motors. The built in frog switching swung it for me.
Finally decided on my track plan and started to make proper progress. Part of the delay was waiting for the warehouse kit to arrive. I wanted that to get a perspective on what was going to go where. The track isn't fixed down yet as I haven't got the Cobalt iP point motors yet, I need to wait for 'pay day' before I can get those.
