Track and All that Jazz....

Have you noticed how odd the track (particularly the metre gauge) is in VN? I don't think I've seen anything quite like it anywhere else. The sleepers (ties) seem to be some sort of composite steel/concrete arrangement where the rails are supported on concrete blocks which are tied together by a relatively thin piece of steel.

Traditionally sleepers are made of timber of course, but many tropical countries found that they rotted too quickly, so steel sleepers have been the go for at least a hundred years. In Australia a number of branchlines (particularly in Queensland) went the steel sleeper way. Of course in some parts of Queensland there weren't a lot of trees to make into sleepers.

Over the past 20 or so years of course concrete sleepers have been rapidly replacing wooden ones. They last a lot longer and seem to take todays heavier trains with less damage and provide a smoother ride.

But in Vietnam we have this 'composite' variety. I'm not even going to attempt to create track like this particularly in N scale. I have never seen model track like this, so short of building my own track, I can't see it happening on my module in the near future. I know lots of modelers build their own track, even in N scale, but they don't have to create what appears to be a quite unique style of sleeper.

Building railway models is often the art of compromise. Our NZ120 friends operate on the principle that if you're standing two feet away (60 cm) and it looks OK then that is acceptable. Standing two feet away from ballasted, weathered track in N Scale you'd be lucky to see some of the sleepers at all, right?

So why worry? Because we are supposed to be recreating reality and until DSVN replaces those unique sleepers with the more common fully concrete variety, they will sit there crying out to be modelled.

Who was the man who said that 'model railroading is fun'?

On another note, over the weekend I did some more work on the module, planting a couple of palm trees as well as some other trees and started planning where the roads will go. I have the ballast ready to be added to the track when I get round to painting and weathering the sleepers and rails. Most people ballast etc before they start adding scenery.  I always do things backwards! As well my tank car is nearly complete as is my gondola (open wagon). And I've been playing around with some ideas for the body of my D18E class.

So, progress is slow but steady but there is progress. How long this all takes only time will tell.......