Valley Good Work

This weekend we managed to get a few jobs done as we continued working at this end of the layout.

To begin with we grassed over of the extension to the cutting on the up side of the line between Gunnmere station and the valley beneath the Nigglehead Viaduct and I think that this looks much better than what was there before. 

It still needs the addition of some trees and bushes and we might even put in a small bridge between the two embankments to enable walkers and animals to cross the line. Provision has also been made for a small pond at the foot of this new incline but we have yet to  make up our minds whether to go ahead with this idea or not.

So, this part of the layout is very much close to completion now and, hopefully, we can soon add some people to the scene. At the moment there are very few figures anywhere on the layout mainly because we do not like to add them until all else is finished and we are happy with the landscaping etc.

A second job that we did was to replace a couple of Hornby points with some Peco ones which, we believe, are vastly superior. When we began building the layout we, rather naively, thought that Hornby turnouts were best or, at least, on a par with Peco. Hence most of the points used on the original part of the layout were Hornby and it is these that we are slowly replacing.

Finally this week, we did some long-overdue wiring, wherein we connected a section of the London Loop to the main wiring bus that travels around the layout under the base boards. Up until now this section has relied on the Hornby Point Clips to deliver the power and they have worked rather well too although, unsurprisingly, there was a slight but definite drop in power. Anyway, this week we finally got the solering iron out and the improvement in performance was quite noticeable.

Actually, I intend to make wiring of the layout the subject of a future blog posting or two so stay tuned!