Abingdon Branch Blog

19^th March 2009

Some of the issues with the layout highlighted at the Abingdon Model Railway Exhibition on 7^th March 2009 have started to be addressed.  Last Friday and this Wednesday we have started to concentrate on the track and point work. 

Tony worked hard on Friday removing the motor from underneath the goods shed point, locating and repairing the fault.  The operating rod had become stuck to the underneath of the baseboard.  Glue had seeped down the side of the droppers form the top and adhered the sliding firmly in one place.    It was returned to service by the end of the evening and now operates perfectly.

Several of the moulded chairs on the inside of the rail were slightly high and were fouling the flanges.  These have been cut down or slightly filed away enabling the flanges to run through smoothly.

Some point blades have been adjusted, filed and slightly tweaked.  Some check rails have been identified as requiring replacement and the double slip continues to give problems and at present and will need further attention.  Work was brought to an abrupt halt on Wednesday when one of the blades came unsoldered.  By now it was time to retire for the evening.

The 1st showing

Abingdon had its first trip to an exhibition on Saturday 7th March 2009 at the White Horse Tennis and Leisure Centre, appropriately in Abingdon. It was presented as “a work in progress” layout and for its 1st outing out of the club room it ran reasonably well.

It has highlighted a number of jobs that need to be done to get it running well but this is to be expected from a progressing layout.

It attracted a lot of interest and although I was not working on the layout during the day due to other exhibition duties, my co owner of the layout chatted to numerous people through out the day.

We now have a list of jobs and plenty of tweaking to do to get it fully operational. There is also the small matter of completing the started buildings and getting started on the other ones.