Hi

After the period of building the Windermere boats and the etching of all those stanchions a change of modelling was needed. Two things came together at this point. A spare bedroom and some passed down 009 locos and rolling stock. This culminated in the infamous episode of bashing a hole through the chimney breast which went up through bedroom to create a tunnel. I would hasten to add the fireplace in the room below was not in use. The bashing through was done when my wife was away for the day! After playing about for some weeks the basis of a station was constructed plus laying track through the tunnel. Alas this was to be the first of several layouts that were started but never finished. The stock was returned to sender and the tunnel blocked up and peace descended on the little known valley. Some time later navies descended again on this valley. I had the bright idea of creating an "indoor garden " line. This had the blessing of my wife. It was to be a very simple layout. Due to the fact I was using real plants I decided to build to a scale of 10mm to the foot. The layout was a bit complex in so much as it was a series of boxes to contain the soil and plants. These boxes were lined with garden pond plastic sheeting and the track bed cut out of 9mm exterior ply. It got, once again, half done when I realised the actual line was to simple to be of interest as a layout to run. My wife pointed out half the interest of the venture was to be tending the landscape. Well, yes, but first and foremost it was a model railway. Inevitably it was all lifted and the plants returned to their natural environment. No photos exist of either layout. The loco and stock for " garden" line was scratch built. The loco was constructed from drawings of one of the Groudle Glen locos but I'm not sure which. The scale as mentioned was 10mm to the foot but I used 16.5 mm track. Two images of this model exist and are hopefully attached. It's nice that that the little G.G.R. has been saved. I'm off to Ellesmere tomorrow The town in Shropshire that is not the port...Hope to get to Chirk and Glynceiriog to see what is happening down there.

Regards, Derek.