Wait line clear

If you've ever seen an STN, CTN or whatever ARTC is using these days to advise of alterations to train pathing, a common abbreviation following a destination arrival time is wlc, (e.g. Kelso 1915, Tarana 1940 wlc, Rydal 2006). Roughly extrapolated this is Wait Line Clear, meaning the train must wait at the location until the line is clear of other traffic before proceeding. It is generally used on trains with a lower priority than others, such as the Robel rail set.

Wait line clear is good way to describe progress on the layout at the moment.

I've decided I wasn't happy with the painted background as I had compromised smoothness for malleability. The grooves in the timber are just too obvious. If the viewer was going to be a meter away, I'd settle for it. Instead, I've written to a company in the US who does custom, self-adhesive backdrops to produce an all-sky backdrop which I can splice the trees and mountains over from the current 'Barinore' backdrops I have. The bloke at the other end produced two samples for me overnight (!):

I prefer the first personally. Mixed with some trees, terrain at the far right, and the cement depot, it should all blend. Here's the new one and Barinore on top of each other for comparison:

Expensive perhaps, but I'm planning on keeping this layout for a while and adding to it as I get more space. For now though, Backdrop, wlc.

Keen to press on with something else while I wait for that, I've been starting to form the scenery at the right where the track exits the module under a bridge. This would allow me to then measure up the fascia, cut it, fit it, and paint it. In making some initial attempts at forming the scenery, I've found that until the Trackrite and track is down I'm going to be guesstimating where the loading bank for the cattle siding will be, as well as an appropriate height for the bridge. I prefer to get the tools out and do it once, so, Fascia, wlc.

My LED lightstrips arrived from China a few weeks ago. I've figured out how to wire them and this weekend I had planned to install them as per this post on the Stonequarry Creek blog by routing a groove in some timber and sliding them in. If I only had the right router bit. You guessed it, special order required. Lighting, wlc.

On the upside, I've had some fantastic coffee while standing in the garage staring at the modules and figuring out what to do next. You just can't beat an espresso machine for smooth - sorry. Back to model railways. Putting the train controller hat on for a moment, if you were to look at these jobs converging on one of the old paper train control graphs, the router bit is probably going to arrive before the sky backdrop, but I want to tackle the latter before anything else.

Current plan: backdrop, lighting, Trackrite, track, landform, fascia, wiring.

Looking forward to the Epping Model Railway Club's exhibition at Thornleigh next weekend too.

Plenty to do. Now to wlc.

Cheers,
Ben