Author

Gus Paul

Date

30th July 2017

Reading Time

3 minutes

One of the advantages of building a modern image layout like Ingatestone is you get the opportunity to visit the prototype to get up to speed on exactly what you are building. 

So with master craftsman Eric Sainte visiting from Belgium we arranged a field trip which had almost a full turnout from the Ingatestone group:

 

We got a bunch of nice shots of some of the details and saw three hours of trains going up and down on a midweek afternoon.

And some of the group and other members got the benefit back at Keen House of Eric explaining some of the techniques he uses.

There is a lot to be gained from being a member of The MRC!

Just a week later and Eric has already made impressive progress on the station building.

 

Back to the work on updates to the layout and we did have the opportunity to connect Board 1 of Ingatestone to the entry to the fiddle yard that we are sharing with the MRC’s HO layout, Putnam.

But it gave us the chance to discover the Ingatestone Gap.   To start with the background it has long been intended that both Ingatestone and Putnam will share a fiddle yard allowing the club to maximise both space and resources.   When initially laying the track on Ingatestone we marked up where the correct locations were to lay our track and got on with fastening it all down.  Earlier in the month was the first chance we’ve had for some months to see the board connected to the first fiddle yard board:

 

Opps!  If nothing else this shows us the value of getting your layout all hooked up together!  Thanks to some help from the Putnam team we got the boards aligned and now just need to set about repairing the track on the loop line.

Ingatestone has been having track nights throughout August…there are two more, so do come along and have a look.

We’re hoping for a lot of progress in the next few weeks, inspired by our glorious (co-)leader…!