Going round the bend (bit nerdy)

In case you've been thinking I've been slacking since Saturday or just playin' trains then the weekend saw the excitement of the arrival of some new(secondhand) track.

Not sure what I do with this yet, but it was for a very reasonable price (including delivery to the IK) on Austrian ebay and it must come in useful in a freight yard/siding environment.  I have a horrible feeling it may involve getting a second one to pair up with it.  Ultimately of course I can dream of a pair of double slips (now only made in electric form) but at £150-£185 each (plus some wiring to work them) then are going to have to wait for some time.

The other pieces were an assortment of curves from Garden Railway Specialists at Princes Risborough whilst their 20% off second hand stuff was still on.  What should have been 9 R2 curves, turned out to be 7 R2 curves and two R3 curves.  The R number is an indication of radius - the bigger the number the higher the radius and the gentler the curve.  Up until now all I have has been R1 curves which can be fairly tight, and I've already commentated about how one engine didn't like the curves and going uphill.   This was after reading the comments on "easements" in Building your model railroad and using gentler curves to lead into the tight curves. So, after a bit of work with the brasso polish we had a go at constructing the following curves:

a) Inside is 3 x Radius 1

b) Next is a R2-R1-R1-R2 combination

c) Next is 4 x R2

d) Next is a R3-R1-R1-R3 combination

Next thing is to start trying to build some of these combinations into the layout and see how the engines like it.