Hello everyone. Well I wish I had some more pictures to show you all but unfortunately I do not have any for today. Basically at this time of year the Christmas Presents for my friends and family have had to be purchased which has left no money for any further work on the layout. However I do have some time off so in the next few days I hope to be working on the following low budget improvements to the layout (and for some reason when I post a list of stuff to do on here it actually helps me get it done...):

• Making the grass scatter a lighter colour. I was not satisfied with how dark the colours of the grass are. From my pictures of the area the grass is usually a lot brighter, so I shall be adding some lighter colours to make it follow the real life prototype.
• Finish the front of the building. I have cut the holes for the windows and doors but I am absolutely petrified I might make one of them the wrong size and as such they are still not cut to full size. I have to admit to lacking confidence in cutting them to the right size (I am not too accurate with my clumsy hands!). Still I might just push on and do it. Once that is done I can paint the inside, add the interior floor, paint that black (so that no light will escape when I install lighting...) and then laminate and attach the final wall to the building. Then I need to start on the roof!
• Make the track run reliably. I believe that some PVA glue from the ballasting is preventing the track from running as well as it could. Therefore I am going to have a proper go at cleaning the track (and scraping it with a small screwdriver where necessary).
• Add some of the extra bits of scatter where required. This is mainly the freight yard and the engine shed areas. Although the small station halt could do with some extra scatter.

I would do some more but my father in law went to France recently and told me that Santa Claus may be bringing some stuff that would assist in the layouts construction. Therefore I believe that after Christmas there could be some activity. But until then I will try and keep going at these small projects and hopefully post some pictures in the next few days.

One thing that I have devised in the past few weeks is a track plan for a new layout. It would be an N gauge test track for running in locomotives and would be constructed on a 4x2 board. It would have 2 sides. One would be for showing off the British Rolling stock and the other would be for trams (based on 1940's America in the snow, although I am hoping it would look like a lot of other places in the world...). I am not sure whether to do both sides in the snow. I might do that as I wont be breaking the board into 2 with a giant scenic break, I would be doing it through positioning of the buildings. I will post a track plan once I have developed the idea a little further.