Extending the Extension

This last weekend saw us finally lay some track on the branch line extension and we also made the decision to keep this line level, as opposed to what I said in my previous posting. 

So, there will now be no gradient which will mean that we will have to lift the brick bridge up a bit by raising the level of the ground beneath it.

The bridge is currently at Mikron Models so that Alex can weather it and, until this is done in a couple of weeks, the branch line has to come to an abrupt stop at the gap where both the brick bridge and the railway bridge, which carry the branch over a minor road and main line respectively, have yet to be put into place.

Now that we have the track in position where the new interchange station will be, between the BR bit of the branch and the preserved extension, you can see that we have marked out the position of the platform between the two tracks. 

This new station will be quite a bit longer than the original one that was at this location and, as can be seen, it will be almost completely on a curve.

Indeed the trackwork here is full of reverse curves, unlike previously where it was boringly straight. This will also be the first time that we will have trains running on a double-sided embankment as well as running over and under each other.

In the final picture you can see that we have made progress at Manxton and have added a couple of buildings from the Bachmann Scenecraft Shillingstone Station set to the down platform. These are the Signal Box (44-165) and the Platform Shelter (44-171) and quite beautiful models they are too!