Although it will still be a while before the right hand point to complete the passing loop will arrive, I thought it worthwhile to set out the final track alignment. One reason was to make sure I don't need to order any additional track pieces. Also, I wanted to tidy up the remaining ballast in the ballast pile, so it made sense to move some of the ballast to where it would be needed anyway.
I used some spare curved pieces laid on top of the existing track where the point will go, to set out the curve to link up with the existing straight portion of the passing loop, then removed the track pieces and laid weed mat along the alignment.
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| Weed mat down ready for an initial layer of ballast. |
After mulling things over for a week or so, I decided to bite the bullet and remove the 3 m straight track where the right-hand point will go, and replace it with spare 10 m radius curves to mimic the geometry of the future point.
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| Spare curved track now leading into the passing loop. |
The straight portion of the passing loop has now been extended using the 3 m straight track removed from the future point location, but there is a gap of about 300 mm remaining to join up the passing loop track.
To fill the gap, I cut the end portion from another spare piece of curved track, and drilled new holes for the bolted track joiners. The slight additional curvature, about 1.75°, pretty much corrected a slight angular misalignment where the curved and straight tracks meet.
The buffer stop which was removed from the former end of track has been reinstalled just ahead of the loco in the photo below, on the main track. All that remains in the short term is to level and fully ballast the new track.
The plan now is for the passing loop track to remain as the through track until the new point arrives.
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