So in the last post about this project https://gordy.uk/2021/01/09/home-office-layout-removeable-staging-track-part-1/ we built the staging stick & over door support.

Now we need to add alignment screws and actaually get some track down on the staging stick.

Alignment

This isn’t difficult and really needed only four screws. Two of the screws are used to allow adjustment up and down of the staging plank at the layout end. This allows for the vertical alignment to be altered and adjusted as required.

You can just see them in the above image below the structure of the staging plank. The two screws inboard of the vertical alignment screws are to ensure horizontal alignment.

Fitting the track

With the track placed on the staging plank I could test the vertical alignment before applying glue to the hold the track in place.

At this point it was vital to check alignment both on and off the staging plank to so this I just used a freight car and kept adjusting the vertical alignment screws until there was no derailment in either direction or noticable movement of the car.

With everything appearing to run well it was time to glue the track down. This is really very simple but the basic rules of track laying apply. first lay a bead of glue along the length of the flex track not side to side, I used Gorrila PVA glue for this. Then before laying the track smooth the bead out to a flat strip of PVA glue.

Then it was time to lay the track ensuring horizontal alignment of the track and then gently pushing the ties into the glue. I like Gorrila glue because its tacky enough to hold the track in place almost immediatley but allows you to re-position some cheaper PVA glues have water added which means track will move until the glue sets so be careful. Align the track horizontally and re test before the glue dries.

Thats pretty much it you should have something that looks like this. If we were using Power onboard we would be done at this point but we are not so we’ll look at some simple electronics in Part 3 of the staging plank.

We’ll get to that in the next few days as we prepare for remote ops on the switching layout.

Stay tuned.

Gordy