Last time I promised a few pics showing progress toward permanence:

That’s the finger-muckying, embossed tunnel mouth and retaining wall.

The left-hand sheet of green foamboard is the 10’ high retaining wall, above which will sit four houses. Actually they are only half-relief house backs and I found the models in my “Possible future use box”, already made from a period when I investigated the kits produced by Metcalf.

On the right is further ex-supermarket foamboard forming the basis of an abutment, a low retaining wall and some scenery formers for a fairly low grass embankment on the viewing side.

My naked eye had not spotted the buffer stops had had some excessively heavy shunting, - dam**d camera!

At this stage I found that I had dropped a clanger in reading the EMGS Manual; ~I had dimensioned my tunnel height from ground level; re-reading the EM drawing showed the dimension I used being from the rail-top, so my K3 would not fit through. It is supposed to be the end of the layout so no loco will need to even enter the tunnel but ??????? I eventually decided on correction!

The tunnel is now enterable, all 1” of it! It has been lined and closed off. Doing this far-end closure raised a silly idea that proved excellent; but more later.

The raised plateau for the four houses now has its permanent foundation walls, - thanks again to our local supermarket.

One gable end of the factory is being glued to the factory floor. The lineside wall of the factory will sit as a link between the high retaining wall of the factory’s approach road and the lower retaining wall at the houses.

The tunnel is now behind us and the housing plateau is in its position. The buildings will be fixed to this and one 12mm x 3 csk woodscrew will retain it, but the base will slide into slots left by the wall facings such that the whole structure is held firmly in place but allowing easy, sliding removal for maintenance.

The factory building is going to be a weird shape! In this pic its shell is taking shape, with the large gable at this end, the small gable further away and complete with the factory entrance door. Joining them is the factory lineside wall here looking more like a continuation of the retaining walls.

The approach road is fitted – on both baseboards. It’s made from backing board which has been well shellacked as protection against any hydroscopic pretensions. To give easier access to the point servos and surface electric wiring this too is secured by those tiny wood screws;- two on this base board; three on the other. All hidden from view.

The cutaway at the middle of the retaining wall is for the lift-off road bridge while that closer to us is simply a drop in height matching the road’s slope to the factory door.

We’re back looking toward the tunnel mouth; indeed if you look carefully the far tunnel mouth is causing a glimmer of light at track level, between the tunnel approach tracks. That silly idea I referred to earlier.

There at the bottom of this picture is the secret; a tiny tunnel mouth shape in the tunnel backing-sheet. It only shows up in some viewing positions but it is much more effective than I had expected. The backing-sheet needed a hole to accept the Alex Jackson coupling or damage may be caused to the fine wire of the coupling. In a silly moment I made the necessary hole tunnel-mouth shaped, and now my 1” tunnel looks about 3’ long from some angles!!

OH! The house backs are resting in their expected final positions.

Same thing really but a closer image.