Sometime it's hard to sit down and work on a layout until you've got a baseboard built so how do you fill the odd hour here or there?

Well this week I've been assembling all my Easytrack (half as OO, the other half is for Rose Hill so is P4). It's quite straightforward but leads to sore fingers sliding the rail through the moulded sleeper bases. The effect is worth it though, it looks superb. Even the OO is fantastic and I've got myself down for point construction in 2010!

So what next? Over Christmas I suspect I'll sketch out the baseboard plans with Dad back at the family home, and work out if I'll need to operate a little selective compression to get Rose Hill fitted within the area constraint of the challenge (and the area constraint of my garage!)

Today was an early Christmas celebration with some friends so not much modelling time - however I did escape down to the Churnet Valley Railway first thing this morning with my 2 year old daughter - very atmospheric and great fun!

Cheddleton depot and station on 13/12/09 about 10am, still frost on the ground and with steam leaking out of the coaches 5199 (a Llangollen loco I believe) awaits with the first Santa special of the day whilst the NCB shunter warms up on the depot.

A distraction this week has been a scratchbuilt BMX bike. I wanted to see if it was possible to fabricate something delicate enough and in proportion - and it is! This is the result of an hours work, and uses 0.45 wire for the forks, headtube, top and downtube, and 0.35mm wire for the handlebars and rear triangles. I'm stuck on what to use for the wheels though, they need to be about 8mm diameter... any ideas? I plan to make two, one for each layout as there will be some dirt jumps modelled in the woods on Paxton Road.

After taking the photos I realise I should have included something for scale - the rear triangle is 5mm across the bottom, and the top tube is 7mm long... i.e. this is tiny!

I must be mad!

Next up, I'm going to finish off the station building and start scratchbuilding some of the platform furniture for Rose Hill (seating and bike boxes) along with further work on Paxton Road's warehouse!