The Empire Mills team have had a busy day.

Les has been hard at work first replacing the highly temporary loading platform that Gareth had to cobble together to show the BBC - who then cancelled the day before the shoot.

The new loading platform will be stonefaced toward the track, with the ground falling away gently on the platform side.

While the papiermache was drying Les then had a crack at placing the cosmetic chairs - a job that everyone had been working very hard to avoid doing over the last few months.

Meanwhile, Chris was working on the platform that sits in front of the very large china clay dry. This involved cutting lots of sections of ply to face the platform before covering it in randomm stone plasticard. The inset sections in the platform face will have ladders fitted in them in due course.

Gareth wasn't idle either; he was busy working on his boggy bit at the front of the layout.

The unkind (and unhelpfully observent) will notice I haven't said what I was doing....well I was busy making wagons for the layouts outing at Alexandra place in 2015 (which isn't that far away now - glup.) the progress of which can be seen on drduuncan's workbench.

We also had an opportunity to start thinking about the next phase of the layout - the production of the coal mine option. To this end Les had brough in a couple of his Loco's to test priot to them being EM'd at some point in the future.

As they are not the correct shade of green, I profess total ignorance about what they are! But Les says black is the new green, apparently - or at least it will be on the coal mine option!

drduncan