Well almost! Three things failed - first, I had to de-ice the shed, getting the wife to work (but she's been very good, working from home!) and ordering the Pannier chassis. With no post reaching us, it seems pointless ordering a package from Chris & then trusting it to the vagaries of the Post Office storage system! However, all is not lost - I've got a conversion kit for the Bachmann '08' which will be the next 'target'. After all, I need something to test the trackwork!

Talking of 'pointless', the first one - the 'yard throat' has been built (see image' courtesy of 'Templot'. For the technically minded it's a curved 1:5.5 crossing angle sitting on a ruling radius of 4'.

The other image shows the linking system for the two baseboards - pattern-makers dowels courtesy of the 'EMGS' and removable-pin hinges courtesy of 'B&Q'! This required a 'slight' design modification in that the 9mm ply used for the end frame didn't hack it with regard to holding the dowels - so I 'beefed' them up with sone 25mm white wood I just happened to have lying about (under a foot of snow). An unintended consequence is that this has now increased the baseboard area by 24 square inces - so I'm now going to have to 'mod' the outer end of each board losing - you guessed it - an inch off each! However, the end-plates will also now carry the backscene, so mixed fortunes really...

Looking forward - six days of 12-hour shifts (snow permitting) will leave little time after today for modelling, particularly as I have to prepare for a prenetation to Farnham MRC next Wednesday evening. If you want to know what it's about - follow the link on my 'profile page'!