Well, rather like Topsy, Forster Street just sort of grew, my original plan was to build the layout from 3 equally sized boards to give a maximum length of 9 feet, however when I visited my friendly timbre merchants, I managed to get boards measuring a total of 10 feet.

Not a problem I thought, they will still fit in the spare room, as its 11.5 feet long, and it gives me a little more railway well what I have come to realise now, is that the 1.5 feet of space between the end of the layout and the bedroom wall is not that big to a six foot seven Gorilla like me.

Not a problem I thought, if I fix the layout on tall enough legs, it will not be a problem to duck underneath it when I need to access each side, then I realised that maybe an exhibition layout set 5.5 feet from the ground is not a good idea

Anyway today I moved board number 3 from the Kitchen table to the spare room to be joined again to the other two boards, and what an exercise this turned out to be, after much swearing, frustration and trapped fingers, the boards where finally together (not due to constructional errors, just due to a Numpty like me)

The problem now is that I have to crack on with the following job list before its exhibition debut, just a short list, so not a problem

1 Completely re-wire the layout, should be simple its a simple track plan.

2 Rebuild the storage yard to include space for the branch line

3 Give the backscene on board 3 another coat of paint to tie the colours in with the other two boards.

4 Get the Domestic Overlord to finally built the "promised" trees

5 Fit some sort of automatic de-coupling to allow hands free shunting in the goods yard (I may just glue staples to the peco couplings and use perm magnenets)

6 Sort out the exits for the main lines and the branch through the backscene

7 Sort out the final list of trains to fill the storage yard

8 Ballast the last remaining odd section of track

9 Weather everything in site

10 Add as many of those small details as I can in the time I have left

Easy or what, I really don't know what I'm worried about (please help your suggestions for any of the above would help) Until the next time as ever Happy Modelling