A wet August bank holiday

Well what a surprise. So what to do?

Having a lie in was number one priority, followed by a list of chores, but after that the aim is to cut the wood for the baseboards of Llanrhaiadr Mochnant, and a smaller board to use for test building my first ply and rivet EM gauge track in thirty two years.

And just for a change I might rebuild the track bed of the garden railway, which hasn't seen a single train run this year.

Meanwhile I have a couple of conundrums to consider.

The first is the bridge.

Now as far as I can ascertain I got the dimensions absolutely right, but it doesn't look it, does it? Now some of this is down to taking photos of a small layout with inappropriate cameras, which is very tempting because a wide angle lens has lots of benefits when trying to take photos inside a very small box. You'll have noticed that in some photos of the station it looks like I've forgotten what a right angle is, but trust me that is mostly down to barrel distortion of the lens used. Mostly. On the other hand this is a very small bridge which wasn't designed for large locos.  Bearing in mind that LM didn't feature a bridge in reality, but one is needed as a scenic break, should I be prepared to go down the "based on" route rather than being strictly prototypical?

The second issue is about lineside fencing.I know I need some, and it should be post and wire fencing, but again what compromises should I make, especially where the "wire" is concerned? In the past  I've used wire, I've used plastic rod and I've  used nylon , but all of them seem to be not quite right somehow. Any ideas?

Still more photos

OK, I'm feeling quite pleased with myself after this weekend's final push.there are still quite a few jobs to do, but most of them are the sort that can be done in a spare five minutes.

Derailed

I was quite pleased with the vintage effect on this photo, especially since it was both shot and edited on my Samsung S3 phone, using Snapseed.

Of course it was only when I transferred the file to the PC that I realised we'd had a bit of a derailment.

Backscene in Place

So late last night I finally plucked up courage to put in the "proper" backscene.

For an off the shelf commercial product I think it fits quite well with the layout. I messed up the clearance for the lid, which means it is best not viewed from low angles, and as the photos show I need to roller over it again to get rid of a couple of ripples that emerged as I bent it to fit. Overall though I'm pleased with the result. It looks better in the flesh than in the photos.

With the backscene in place I can now start adding the real scenic work, starting from the back of the diorama and working to the front.

Scenics

I began work on applying static grass yesterday. It has made a difference, but at the moment it just looks like static grass to me. I did some work on the backscene as well, but  it remains a rough and ready  sketch for the final version

Reward

I had a reward in mind for myself if I made the planned progress on Saturday, and since I did, here it is:

Showing up all the flaws

A Bachmann 45XX , so that at long last I actually have a GWR loco. The last one I had was a Triang "Albert Hall" back in 1968. The small catch is that as far as I know this class never ran on the Tanat Valley and really a 2MT 2-6-0 would be more appropriate, or a 58xx. On the other hand I've lusted after one ever since the original Lima version came out.

The coach is equally unlikely to have seen service on the TVR, being a Bachmann suburban Mk1. You'll be glad to hear I have flush glazing on order for it.