Excuse the pun but it is now time to get this build back on track after real-life had got in the way of progress. Talking of track, the base consists of nine sections on which two railway lines are laid.
There are a total of 28 sections of track and 48 fishplates:
Parts have been removed from the runners and will need a lot of cleaning up, especially the fishplates:
Putting the section of track and fishplates to one side, I turned to the base sections. There are seven identical sections plus two end pieces and I started by glueing these onto the larger sections:
On the rear side of the joins I glued scrap pieces of plastic card along the join:
I then added two more sections to each end and strengthened them too with plastic card:
Turning the sections over, I slid some track over the joins to help keep the sections reasonablly level. Getting the unpainted track to slide through the tie downs was really difficult and I will have to resort to a fair amount of fettling in order to get painted track sections through:
These sections flex a lot with weight on them and I have been investigating all sorts of ways to stop it. In the end I purchased some wooden 15mm cubes that will be glued to the underside to keep the sections level and will add a couple of wooden battens too. The centre section of the base won't be glued to the other two sections because at over 1.1 metre long it will be a handful to move around.
The sections have been put to one side now in order to let the joins set firmly.
That is all for now
Dave