Hi All,

I know it's been a long time but due to the holidays and all, not much has been done on any of my layouts. But with the Convention looming in less than a fortnight (and last weekend's horrible weather) I thought I'd better make some progress!

So last weekend I finally got around to doing some ballasting. As it was my first time I stayed well clear of the point work (I've already had to replace three of them).

As I'm building an Austrian layout the ballasting in the station looks a bit like this:

This was Mayerhofen in 2008.

As you can see the ballast is very pale and it's right up against the top of the rails. So in order to get the ballasting in the station right, I bought some very pale, fine, ballast. I think it's Scenecraft, but know it as pale, fine and intended for N gauge.

As I don't have a lot of it, I thought I'd better raise the bits between the track. This is where cats come in useful! Recycled cat food boxes!

The perfect height for the sleepers! Perhaps in hindsight I shouldn't have put the point levers in quite yet. But hey-ho you live and learn!

I won't be going quite as high as on the real thing as the HF 110's outside motion gets very close to the rails.... At the front you can also see some of the ballast already in place, not bad for a first attempt I think!