It’s not that I have not been doing anything on Innsdorf, although I must admit I have not been doing as much as during the lockdowns (who would have done?). What I have not done, though, is to finish anything and so I have not really had much to show you.

Those who have followed me from the start may have taken in that the station, the two baseboards with which I began and which rest on brackets on the wall of my hobbies room, is intended to be portable, to be taken in due course to model railway exhibitions, whereas the rest of the layout with its mountains and tunnels is fixed into the room. I decided that in order to get an exhibitable layout ready I really needed to create the kit needed to operate the station separately from the fixed section of the layout, and this would mean making legs and a “fiddle yard,” a set of non-scenic sidings which represent the rest of the RhätischeBahn system offstage. I have bought the wood and begun the construction, but I cannot assemble it all in the hobbies room because that is not long enough, so … we wait for the summer weather so that I can set it up outdoors, probably in my garage.

Meanwhile I have continued to develop the intermediate station and its wiring and progress has been slow – I discovered a mistake in my planning which I can easily-enough correct. I do want to get this bit right first time, even if it means that the “first time” is later than we might like!

I have also continued to acquire things as they have become available, such as the rest of the signalling equipment for the layout, some buses (very rare, some of these, and need to be grabbed when they appear) and just one more locomotive and a few more wagons and coaches.

I’ve been taking video of the jobs I’ve been doing and will put something together for the blog as soon as one thing reaches a worthwhile stage!

The middle station needs no power feed of its own, being powered by the controllers at the two termini (well, just Innsdorf at the moment, but the mountain terminus, Bad Moritz, will have one in due course), but it does need its points and signals to be controlled locally, and I have built a small panel to hold the switches for these.

To operate the points I decided not to use the Hornby/Peco type of motors that I used at Innsdorf which left a big hole under each point that was hard to hide, but rather to use some second-hand Hammant & Morgan motors I happened to have, along with an ancient Tri-ang motor that probably dates from my childhood but still works. The H&M motors are used in the same way that I used when I added electric point operation to Kingsgate: a rod through a small hole in the baseboard between sleepers near the point, with a stiff but springy steel wire soldered into a deep groove in the end of the rod and hooked into the tie-bar of the point – stiff enough to push the point blades across but flexible enough to absorb excess movement. The Trip-and motor is mounted above the board and will be hidden in the scenery.

The track layout at this station is simply two loops off the single track and as the points at each end of each loop will always be changed together there was no complex insulation needed to avoid shorting the live-frog points, and provided I used a capacitor-discharge system to provide the “oomph” I could change both points at once with one momentary contact switch for each loop. These are toggle switches so it is hopefully going to be instinctive to operate … A switch is also provided at each end of the panel for the starter signals.

The power controller that will eventually be used at Bad Moritz, the proposed top station, has a socket for a hand-held second controller and I shall be able to use this in the event that train control is needed at the intermediate station, for shunting, for example, or for running a locomotive round if I decide to terminate trains here for some reason.

There is still much to do here electrically so rather than make you all wait until it’s finished, this video is a bit of an interim report. More to follow when I get a bit further with the project!

Was it really May last year that I posted the beginning of the spiral climb? That was just as Britain was beginning a degree of freedom from the restrictions imposed to control the spread of Covid-19 and from then activity tended to be out and about rather than in the railway workshop! There was progress, but rather bitty and nothing much to write about here: the odd bit of track laid, the occasional bit of detailing, some planning and some carpentry. Some of that has now come together and real progress is being made on the Alpine pass scenic section, with the trackbed now extended as far as the intermediate station and beyond towards the mountain terminus. Indeed, since the video was made track laying is complete as far as the intermediate station approach points, so the next video should not be too long in being needed.

Meanwhile I have also been adding to detail in the Innsdorf station and village area with gifts of people and the gradual addition of more snow etc to make this first sectional complete as possible. Occasional running sessions have taken place in order to prepare to exhibit this portable section eventually. I was also given a “new” train, an Allegra electric multiple unit, a type of train I have travelled on often in Graubünden and which really places the layout in both place and era.

So far I have described the construction of the layout in terms of baseboards, track, wiring and scenic work, but, of course, the trains are as important as anything else! I do not build the trains myself as some other modellers do, largely because I know too little about Swiss trains to set about building them; also because such work would take a very long time and I wish to have a layout I can run as soon as possible (perspective shifts as you age: a young person can start building with a view to having a complete layout in, say, fifteen years’ time). However, there is still work to do to the commercially-produced trains that I use. I have already described the addition of passengers inside the coaches (and I still have many more of those to add), but many of the vehicles I buy come with a pack of super-detail which I always use to add the appearance of the models. Because I buy mostly used items I sometimes have to make the details which may be missing from them, but recently I bought my first brand-new Bemo locomotive and have just finished detailing it with the super-detail pack …

Detailing locomotives and rolling stock, as well as buildings and road vehicles, is an interesting task that can be undertaken in parallel with the more tedious jobs such as ballasting or with jobs that require setting aside for glue-setting or paint-drying, so many of my vehicles have been quietly detailed in the background over the last couple of years, and I thought it was perhaps time I mentioned it!

Meanwhile design and construction of the next part of the mountain section is slowly moving forward and I hope to post an update soon. Somehow time just keeps slipping by …

Apologies for “internet silence” for so many weeks. The simple explanation can be seen on my other website, www.mwtrips.co.uk, which details the many trips and tours that I have undertaken now that travel is allowed again! There are still some absences to come, one of them for nearly two weeks, but I have recommenced work on Innsdorf and hope to be posting something new soon.

Last month I posted about the construction of the canopies for the platforms at Innsdorf, but I did not install them because the wiring of the lighting under each canopy required the turning over of the station baseboard to work on the underside, which was not convenient at the time. This has now been done, and here is the story:

This was a good dry-run for taking out the two portable sections which are intended to be “exhibitable” and did reveal some issues, so I took the opportunity to remove about 15mm from the end of the layout (mercifully not yet developed!) to make it easier to extract these sections. We are now not far off being able to call this part complete: back scene and more snow to go, I think! And maybe more lighting … no layout is ever finished, but can be exhibited when complete. Before it can be shown, however, I do need to create a portable fiddle yard and some trestles, plus some display material. If a show came up next month I’d race aead with that work, but it will not be needed for many months yet and I can take my time, balancing that with the construction of the, fixed, mountainous sections for my own entertainment!

A start to scenery in the mountain area

The system I had devised in my head for taking the overhead electrification into the hidden storage area but leaving the hidden sidings devoid of the the clutter of overhead wires has been successfully installed, and I have moved on to begin creating the mountain scenery ready for building the spiral gradients on the other main line which will take it over the one laid a fortnight ago and into the mountain terminus above the hidden section. A small step in a long journey, but a firm start!

Here is the description of that early work: