Still on Track

It's been a while since the last railway related post so it's time to give an update on the track building. I've done all the track and points for the top deck storage yard also known as Mittagong and now I just have to fix it all down. I'm waiting on the delivery of some Kadee under track magnetic uncouplers before I mount the track but in the meantime, here's how it looks

Track is Code 55

Hopefully, the uncouplers will arrive soon but in the meantime, I have to build the 9 points necessary for Thirlmere. I've made a good start on 4 of them, one of which is curved. This is my first attempt at building a curved point so I hope it works.

 Just have to add the sleepers and throw bars

I still have to mount the point motors, wire everything up and build some control panels so I think we're another couple of months off at least before a train runs. It'll be good to finish it though as I'm keen to get back into building some rolling stock. Building track doesn't give me the same buzz as building carriages but it has to be done.

Achtung Shpitfire!!!

And now for something completely different! For a while now, I've been trying to get my son interested in modelling, specifically, modelling Trains. This has been successful to varying degrees but the bug hasn't bitten yet. There's a lot of things that compete for a young boys attention these days, far more than when I was a kid that's for sure. Computer games, TV, sports of all kinds, Lego, reading. you name it, my son gets into it. So when we went on our last holiday, aside form the usual train magazines, I also bought some plane mags  which my son also read. You see, I have a bit of a "thing" for WW2 aircraft as well. Anyway, soon the questions started, "What's the best plane in the World dad", "What's a Mosquito Dad", "How fast did they go" etc, etc. Next thing there was a centre spread from one of the magazines up on his wall. It was of an Avro Anson which has just been recently restored.
Thinking back to my childhood, it was making model planes that really got me into modelling. I was around 10 when I started to make planes and I remember clearly one birthday getting a 1/72 scale Airfix Lancaster. It was nearly the best present I ever received! So I thought, maybe he'd like to make a model aeroplane?

I bought a Revell 1/72 scale Spitfire MkV starter kit that comes with glue, paint and a paint brush and after a couple of weeks and some help from Dad, here's my son's first plane

He's very proud of it

The Spit is in the markings of Pilot Officer Axel Svendsen of 234 Squadron based at Tangmere in 1942. Next we're going to finish off a Monogram 1/48 scale B24D Liberator that I'd started years ago. I was going to do it as "Strawberry Bitch" a B24 from the 512th Bomb Squadron of the 376th Bomb Group. This was one of the Bomb Groups involved in the famous low level raid on the oil refineries of Ploesti in Romania on 8/1/1943. My son doesn't like the name so it's going to be "Moby Dick" a B24 from the 90th Bomb Group, 5th Airforce operating in the South Pacific... and he likes the sharks mouth on the nose. I'll post some pic's of it when we finish it.

On another note, I've finished all the points for the storage yard so if I'm lucky enough to get some time tomorrow, I might be able to get some track down.

So many models, so little time