Nice design. The layout is very compact, but has plenty of operating potential. I look forward to seeing it develop.

Lisa

Thanks for the encouragement, the milestones really do help, I agree! The other great help was saying to a friend that I'd bring it over the weekend before easter. My intention was to have only the outer complete at that stage, but I did the whole thing. The only regret with rushing so much is that I didn't quite do all the testing I should have done, so only the shorter loco's will run on it and not the big 0-8-0's. Nor the railcar....

I'm particularly proud of the transition piece at the base of the ramp. It's built from a pizza box, there are three little piles of ever higher squares glued together with super glue. Track pins in the middle of each square help to keep the pile in place while at the same time easing the track into the curve.

My earlier coupling problems at the base of the climb, I've solved by bending the loops on the coupling slightly downwards on some wagons (e.g. the white van), this prevents it nicely. The flip side is that you may have to couple the train together by hand, but then this is not a shunting layout!

The next few weeks will see a little less work being done on it, mainly trying to get the running qualities better a slow process. At the same time I need to go shopping for some things so I can start to do the scenery. Initially this was just a test track, but I feel it would look a lot better landscaped, and at the same time it will give me a chance to practice ahead of doing the main layout which it is resting on. As you can see there are a few items on there already, I picked those up over the weekend.

Standing on my chair was the only way of getting the height required to take the photo, I should have gotten a proper chair from elsewhere, but it's cramped enough in the train room already with the train table and my work bench (an old Ikea dining table), which was so full of tools and stuff that I couldn't stand on that either!