Well, as I have a fair few projects on the go and at planning stage, I thought I'd start a blog to detail them rather than clog up the boards with thread after thread.

What can we expect from reading this? As the blog name suggests, my primary area of interest is the Great Central Mainline and the Metropolitan Line, with the eventual goal of building a model based upon the joint route (at the moment I'm toying with a model of Marylebone, albeit a 'might have been' variant with Metropolitan joint working). And the scale/gauge combination I work in is 4mm scale, 16.5mm gauge.

The era I model is early LNER- roughly 1925 to 1930. This allows me not only to run my GC-liveried Butler Henderson alongside LNER-liveried locos, but also allows a variety of liveries for the latter. Most of the locos I have built or adapted myself run in pre-1928 colours, whilst of course RTR examples mostly appear in early 1930s garb. So eventually the planned layout will be set during the changeover period of 1928-30- Directors both in LNER green and LNER black, some locos with numbers on the tender and others with numbers on the cabside and so on and so forth.

Quite a lot of my work in the past has been fairly rough and ready; I've spent the last six months or more revisiting my older projects and either updating them or scrapping them outright and replacing them with better ones (the J11s I completed recently being an example of such a project). With each model I steadily improve and I'm now starting to get results I can be proud of.

Some of the projects here will be kitbuilds, others hack-bashes of RTR stock. I found out early on that scratchbuilding at the moment is at the very limits of what I can do.... little steps are the key.

So here is my envisaged programme of builds for the remainder of 2013:

- LNER L1/L3 2-6-4. This will be a Dean Sidings resin kit running on a Triang jinty chassis. It is next in line for my loco projects.

- LNER B4 'Immingham' class 4-6-0. This will be a hack-bash of an old Triang B12, with valvegear from a Bachmann O4.

- LNER B5 'Fish' class 4-6-0. Again, like the 'Immingham', a hack-bash of a B12. In this instance the more modern Hornby offering.

- LNER A1 'Centenary' 4-6-2. This will be a conversion of a Hornby Railroad 'Flying Scotsman'- it needs a GNR coal rail tender.

- Rake of 1911 GCR corridor stock. These will be conversions of ex-Mainline LMS 57' stock. One of the four carriages is already completed.

- GCR clerestory/ three arc suburban stock. I have seven Hornby clerestory carriages for these conversions.

- GCR 6-wheel brakevan. I'll be hacking up a Hornby LMS brakevan and placing it on the chassis of a Hornby 6-wheel milk tanker.

Of course, as I'm building these other projects come to mind (and some even get bought and put away for a while....) so I'm formulating the 2014 planned build programme too. At present this stands at:

- LNER D9 4-4-0. A Triang 2P that will be hack-bashed.

- LNER J10. I'm looking into the possibility of converting a Hornby Dean Goods into a J10.

- LNER J13. I'm looking at turning a Hornby Jinty into a J13.

- Metropolitan E class 0-4-4. A hack-bash from a Triang M7.

- Metropolitan G class 0-6-4. A conversion of a Dean Sidings Barry Railway L-class tank engine.

- Metropolitan Bo-Bo. A Radleys resin kit.

- Metropolitan covered van. A Radleys resin kit (already under construction).

The project I am about to start is a conversion of a Mainline LMS brake composite into a reasonable likeness of a GCR corridor brake third. This should be fun!