Hi all.

Well, as usual things down at 2mm scale Ropley have been moving at a glacial pace! Quite the opposite from the real world location it seems.

As many of you will now know, Ropley will be making its first ever public appearance at RMweb live in September.

Gulp.

This will very much be as a work in progress, however I have drawn up a (short!) list of things I would like to have done by the time the show comes around. This is mostly finishing off elements which have been started but not finished, such as the carriage and bolier shop building, water tower and general ground work around the yard. Recent work has focused on repainting four Graham Farish containers to represent those next to the coal staithes. This was done using Humbrol enamels mixed to give roughly the correct colours, before being weathered. The two green containers have a multitude of different shades of green, and I have replicated this as best as possible.

There is a whole multitude of 'stuff' to be modelled between the containers and the C&B building, and the plan for this is to build it as a separate unit which will then be dropped into the layout once complete. Doing it this way will allow me better access to the scene to add some of the smaller details found in the area and without having to drag the whole layout out each time to work on it.

I am very much looking forward to bringing the layout to Coventry, in whatever state it happens to be in at the time! It may not visually change a great deal between now and then, but hopefully the fiddle yards will be complete and the layout will be able to operate as intended. It will also be interesting to see if the layout is up to exhibition levels of use!!

Cheers,

Tom.