Let me level with you

Well it was a frantic time getting ready for the YMRG Open Day in July.  Keith managed to complete the new track-work for points to and from Yeovil Junction just in time but Olivia and I had a busy schedule trying to get the layout back together in time.  Corners were cut but on the day it "appeared" to run smoothly to the visitors...

After patching a few problems on the fly most did not realise the operating restrictions we had, not least the fact that I was operating on my own with some help from a complete railway novice (my sister-in-law) who helped run the shuttle.

The first task the following Wednesday was to level the layout before deciding what was a real snag and what was false.  I decided that previous efforts of using cheap laser levels were not worth the effort so invested in a Bosch self-leveling laser which worked very well indeed.  We made a tall target so that we could level the track bed (not the baseboards) over the top of the back scenes.  The floor of the chicken shed slopes towards the centre of the room so there were large differences across the 31 feet of layout.

Eventually after two club nights and many wooden blocks (the adjusters for each leg only go so far) we had it level and it ran very well indeed.

We are now going to fix an old baseboard that has been badly distorted with a large dip so we need to reinforce it to be flat again.