Rain Continues to stop play: but I have a new friend (LGB 50040)

Domestic life has been a bit up/down with mum now in/out of hospital twice in the space of a month.  Nothing especially serious - although nothing should be taken for granted given her age - but draining nevertheless as one deals with the endless round of hospital calls / meals on wheels calls / carer calls...

Rain has continued to frustrate play on Iscatalbahn...
The following should give an indication of how wet and unpleasant it has been.

We did have a brief gap of a few hours one Sunday ( I think) when I managed to fashion a curved trackbed for the R3 outer loop.  A few hours work - measuring and cutting and fitting and checking -.   

It may not seem like much but aside from cutting the board there is also the base of the blue brick beneath it  so that the wood is not in much contact with the soil to prevent rot for a while.

As an indication of how much rain we have had though here is a bit of track - which was going blue from the weather...

Which brings me to a new good friend - the LGB Track rubber (part no 5004/50040).  The abrasive pad is some sort of acrylic mix (rather than sandpaper) and cleans track quickly and with a minimum of mess - there is some degrading of the material to clean away, but it is far superior to Brasso (which I had been using - and which is smelly and messy) and appears to be nowhere near as harmful to the actual brass as sandpaper.  Equally good is that replacement pads are available from Massoth too...   Following results are after only a minute or so of work on the aforementioned track.  Second pictures shows two of the cleaners (I discovered a "used" one in one of the second hand train sets I have bought).