33⅓ or that Homer moment

Not a cryptic reference to a rediscovery of Vinyl or the latest customer satisfaction survey of Sleazy Jet but unfortunately to say the percentage of correctly operating turnouts on Line No 4, Oh heck. A bank holiday weekend started full of promise and a extensive to do list dissolved into tears tantrums and blood ( mental note do not drop minidrills they can lead to grooves in your leg ). Attempts to fettle one point wrecked the tie bar mechanism and another’s micro switch refused to play. A Quick trip to Maplins called for who only had regular size switches in stock. Hours later the bottom of the baseboards looks like an attack of woodworm from my attempts to get the “rather disagreeable” * switches to work till the penny dropped the switch travel was too great, another Homer moment in my life.


An attempt to replace the tie bar with a pucker Easitrac mechanism was doomed to failure as after several hours I finally acknowledge the impossibility of securing the wire tie bars on an in situ point. So back to plan I’ve lost count and burnt fingers later a bodged but working point minus the important electrical bit.

Marge sorry I mean the wife came to the rescue and now I await small switches (a selection) and the solder station I was drooling over in Maplins, I will confess not as nice as the set up in the RO office of one of the ships where the Iron bits were mounted on jacks to enable fast changes and the spare cabinets would have yielded enough switches and electrical components for many a layout.


On the positive side Mrs Homer was showing a Girl she works with some pictures of Line No4, as she had assisted in selecting the path colour and was interested in its progress. Although Line No4 was long gone when she had worked at two of Kent’s Pits they were both constructed roughly at the same time, she had worked in the canteens at Tilmanstone and Snowdon in the seventies and was reported as saying that buildings looked how she remembered them.




* Insert suitable phrase