Tonstadt Lagerplatz

I took a long break from my layout in June. Partly due to holidays, but partly due to trying to get motivated to spending several hours under the baseboards doing the new wiring. Fitting the Cobalt point motors was a lot more stressful than I was anticipating.

However, the wiring is now finished, the track is down and fixed, and I can actually run trains that don't stall on points. The great thing now is that I am finally at the stage where I can spend the occasional 30-60 minutes here and there without it being a major endeavour.

My task yesterday was to 'build' a brick wall from Scale Model Scenery. I was not happy with my first attempt that followed their assembly instructions. So instead of gluing to the supplied laser cut card, I fixed it to 10m foam board and made coping stones from DAS clay.

Those of you who know about such things might question whether the buffer stops are accurate for a German based layout. While have I have seen some photos of similar buffer stops being used in Germany, they are very rare. The reason for choosing these instead of the more usual Rawie design is that these cost £3.50 from PECO. When I was first looking at this, the only O gauge Rawie ones that I could find were etched brass kits that cost €45 each plus shipping from Germany. I had plans to modify the PECO ones to make them a little more Germanic, but I have just discovered that Lenz make some that are available in the UK for a more affordable £12.50 each.