Just back from an enjoyable weekend with St Ruth at the Aldershot show organised by the Farnham and District MRC.

Getting the new sea siding crossover finished in time for the show was a bit of a struggle. We could certainly have used some more time to deal with the stickiness that always seems to happen as soon as new track is painted... and then again when it is ballasted. It managed to (mostly) make it through the weekend though.

The other new items were a new goods yard shunting scheme to cope with the loss of the loop, Ian's new trees, Steve's mess hut and a revised backscene with a semi-3d effect.

I think that John must have really burned the midnight oil on the backscene. It has been underway for most of the summer but last Tuesday it was completely white so it was a huge surprise to see it in glorious technicolour when the layout was put together on Friday night. It makes a vast difference to the visual impact of the layout. Here's John filling in one last bit of missing colour before the lighting pelmets went on. Is that a cup of coffee that I see on the beach?

Chris also produced a special train to take full advantage of the new operational possibilities of the sea siding to show how the railway used the laws of physics to move empty coaches into the platform without the need for one of those costly loco things. It also produces some interesting effects if it isn't perfectly coupled to the loco when it departs for London.

Thanks to Ian Morgan and David Stratton for stepping in to help out with operating the layout at short notice. Both of them got the hang of our schedule and St Ruth's controls very quickly and did a sterling job for the whole weekend. Thanks too to Mr Brummitt for delivering a certain trophy to us from far off Bolton and to the judges who awarded it to us. And finally of course thanks to Noel and the team for organising a great show.

Next up... Burton on Trent in 3 weeks time. I think that the main work before then will be some more debugging of the new bits.

A few photos of some other layouts that caught my eye. As usual my photos don't do them justice...

Loch Tat - lovely colouring

Brixcombe

Westcliff