Despite my silence, work is progressing. The last couple of weeks have been building trackwork. The layout has been designed using "Trax" which I bought some time ago when I found the intricacies of Templot beyond me and more than I needed for the level of realism to which I was aspiring. That's not knocking Templot at all, because it is clearly the Rolls Royce of track designing software. Trax I found quicker to use and it generates turnout templates. My aim has been to get far ahead with track construction in advance of the baseboards arriving, which is scheduled for next weekend.

I've learned a lot in the last few days - I've been reading blogs and magazine articles avidly for tips and methods for trackbuilding. At last I am getting some sort of consistency and I've built about 25 turnouts. However, through this process my standards have risen and I am now scrapping and replacing some of the earlier attempts. And this afternoon I reached a natural pause, having run out of bullhead rail!

The photo shows my 2nd or 3rd attempt at the scissors crossing at Newport. I've simplified it by making the three way point a separate item, though I'm slightly embarrassed to admit the reason for this is in the already designed and built lever frame for Newport when I realised that my design wouldn't support interlocking involving the three way point.

Chris