The Roots of the Mountains

The time has finally come to start the construction of the Alpine pass section of the layout! It has taken a little time to build the baseboard (well, I say, “baseboard,” but some of it is empty framework) because it had to go alongside some rearrangement of the room which is now dominated by the layout rather than the railway being along just one wall.

The plain baseboard which extends into the room will carry hidden sidings representing the rest of the RhätischeBahn network, and above it will be the higher-altitude terminus station. At the end of the room, across the window, will be the winding track carrying the line between the two levels via a small intermediate station. There is a lot of work to do here, and a lot of mistakes to make, I am sure, since my experience in any sort of countryside modelling is severely limited (I think I last built a rural scene about fifty years ago) and in narrow-gauge mountain modelling is zero.

I have some HOm points bought second-hand on eBay in readiness for this moment, and some Peco flexible plain track has just arrived from Hattons by courier this morning (in normal times I’d have caught the train to Peterborough and bought it from Train 4U but it is not listed on their website so I had to look elsewhere). I bought cork underlay last summer when the shops were open, and some adhesive when buying the timber last week. Ready to go …