Last weekend, Peter came down and we made good progress on the pillars needed to support the next section of track:

My previous post showed the first pillar (20cm wide). This shows the next one (10cm wide) and then the last two (10cm and 20cm wide respectively.

Between them are two clamps attached to the fence posts, which will also act as supports.

The pillars will be used to support the track bed. Here you can see the baseboards rested in place (not yet properly levelled, connected or screwed into the pillars).

Once the baseboards have been fixed in place and track laid, the reversing loop will be reattached at the end.

The spacing and widths of the pillars are driven by plans to have a viaduct facade along this part of the track – more details in a future post.

Also this week, work has begun on upgrading the radio control units in the diesel locomotives. This is necessary because the transformer used for the point switching unit interferes with the control of the diesel locomotives. So when the point motors are powered, the locomotives start moving randomly.

This will be rectified by replacing the Playmobil AM system with a 35 MHz system. I have very little technical expertise in this area, but fortunately I am being assisted by Peter’s father-in-law Igor, who is an expert, having flown many radio controlled model aircraft using such systems.

Here you can see the fruit of our work to deconstruct the locomotive to get at the existing radio control unit and motor drive unit.

Let’s hope we can put it all back together again successfully!