Storm damage

It's been raining a bit recently...

Thankfully no major flooding round these parts, however I do store the boards of the portable layout at the back of my garage. Mindful of the fact that the garage is only single-skin brick and southwesterly facing, I keep the boards stacked off the floor and away from the rear wall.

BUT... The rear section must have fallen against the rear of the garage and when I checked it earlier today, one section was soaking wet and mouldy.

I had intended to carry out some remedial work to this board by cutting and wiring the tracks together like I've done with one of the other hinged boards. The idea being to make it quicker to set the layout up and pack down without having to remove so much loose-laid track.

Although I'd planned to eventually upgrade this section of the layout, I don't have the time, money or enthusiasm to have this completed by this weekend. I tried to chisel out the blown section in an attempt to get the tracks to level out but in the end I realised that I was wasting my time.

Thankfully I found a near-identical piece of MDF in the loft...

So the damaged piece was unscrewed & removed and the replacement slotted in. I also managed to find a scrap piece of grass mat and after some more searching I found the PVA glue...

Time to relay the track. I had experimented with this section previously with fixing all the track down but had never trimmed the track to size, leaving a big overhang of track on one side when folded up, which then got bent and eventually snapped off.

I had envisaged having to cut the tracks level with the ends of the hinged sections but after some tweaking with the 1/4 sections of track that were already on the board, I managed to get the two ends close enough to the edge to avoid further cutting.

After a quick solder job underneath, the tracks were screwed back down...

At the moment, the tracks line up perfectly without the need for adding cut-down fishplates. I'll keep some in reserve just in case I need some at the weekend.

A brief run over both sections using my recently acquired brick wagons confirmed that both sections were fine...

I'll leave this section indoors to let the glue dry properly. The rest of the boards look to be ok but I guess I'll only know for sure when they're all set up on Saturday.

Fingers crossed.