Just a quick not in passing, to update on what's been happening

It's been a while since I last made a post, because it;s been a hectic few months, meaning my layout has taking a serious step into tha background.

Since the last time, I have started a new job, moved house, and all the circus that involves.

As my job was in a totally different town, we were limited in the choices of new house to move to, so I was worried at first about where I could put my board, and was worried it would be a case of a serious downgrade in the already small size of a layout. But.....we have a cellar yay.

The house has a nice sized cellar that was, well, I can only describe it as a right mess. Last years flooding and previous tenants left a bomb site.

Everything in there was covered in mould, and a mess all round.

So....2 months of hard work in between shifts, along with 2 dehumidifiers working 24/7, and I have a room that while not perfect or finished, at least is usable without worry about damage to things in there. With acceptance that family crap has to be stored down there, it still leaves me with a reasonable space to put my board.

Although I'm almost back at day one, at last I'm at a stage where I can get on and start to build my 'dream' first layout, which is more an attempt to make things look like something half decent.

The2 ovals are now fully ballasted, the points are working, and the only damage in the move has meant replacing one piece of track and a rewire.

My attempt to build a static grass applicator following the on-line instructions (using a 'poundland' fly swatter and a teas stainer) has gone better than I could have expected, and it seems to do the job, so anyone comfortable with a soldering iron I'd recommend you give it a go, it's a nice easy project.

So what's to come.

For now I'm looking at 3 areas.

DCC, for which I'm looking into the new Hornby e-link system. It's probably going to be Christmas before I get one, but wiring up and layout is now focussed towards making it in a way that will easily be converted.

Scenery, I need to plan what is going where, and how to achieve it. It's still more a planning and trial and error sort of thing, working on a sort of module style, small scenes worked into the general layout. Nothing in stone, but lots of ideas

Track. I still want to take the centre spur into a raised section, ending in a decent terminal station. This will be more realistic to achieve now, as with it being in the new location, I have alot more room to play with, and the idea in my head will I think work well. The problem now is finding a workable way to raise the track, something that in all honesty I haven't settled on a method I'm comfortable with.

So that's it really. Nothing much has happened, but hopefully this has been a temporary issue, and I should be able to update more regularly with something practical to say.

Steam on