Going off the rails… well, on them actually!

After a chance conversation with Jason from the North Shields club about railways for 1/300th games he said he had picked up a pack of the Hornby Track Planning Symbols for use in a planned game. I’ve not really had chance to talk to him properly since so I don’t know how far he has progressed but I liked the idea and grabbed a pack on eBay. They are 1/4 OO/HO scale so as close to 1/300th as you are likely to get! You get a reasonable selection of straights (enough for 3-4ft) but you also get LOTS of curves and points. And as this is for model railway planning, you  get curves for doing twin tracks and fancy crossovers.

On a visit to Timecast I was talking to Mark and Barry about any plans for doing track rather than using actual model railway track which is a tad too big. The issue is always how much you do. You need straights, points and curves. But if you do curves, what radius? And do you allow for double track? And curved points? So this Hornby stuff seemed a good idea. They also said they had looked at this as well for some models but had found it really difficult to glue…to anything. Something about the type of plastic being glue resistant!

Now I bought the pack months ago and as with many projects it has sat on the side waiting. However, at SMOGGYCON last weekend Martin at Warbases has a little bargain box so I picked up a pack of 132mm lengths of MDF which I thought would be ideal for the track. And today I found a little time to make a section up.

I just lathered on UHU glue and let it dry fully, trimmed the ends, and then used Vallejo White Pumice to texture the rest of the base. Sprayed with mid brown an then painted and dry brushed the lot.

You can get an idea of what the basic track looks like below. The only slight issue is that some/most pieces have a code number on them. I may try and trim some of these off but on the test piece I left them on and then painted that bit black. I also used one of the very short track sections in the middle and that makes it look a little uneven.

Overall, assuming the glue thing doesn’t kick in, I’m quite happy with it. Future one’s I’ll texture to make the raised track bed more prominent. And I want to move to some double track, maybe mostly curved. Martin at Warbases has said he can cut curved bases to size so if I can work up some templates that should be good to go. The lots of interesting points etc. will allow some nice rail yards to be made up, I hope.

Still, as with all projects, lots more to do!