So it's been a while since my last update. Progress has slowed on the railway through January and February as I have been volunteering at a vaccine clinic many weekends, work has been taking up a lot of time, and two children's birthdays needed attending to. I found myself with a spare couple of hours this afternoon so decided to work on the side back scene. Having spent a couple of hours trying to sketch in convincing perspectives to carry the quayside into the back scene it was proving impossible to find something that looked convincing that I could paint on. Instead, I decided to try a mirror. I've seen this done on other layouts in the past and it helps to convince the viewer that the layout carries on into the distance. Looking on Amazon I found some self-adhesive flexible mirror tiles which seemed to do the job so sent off for a pack. 

Having received them they were very easy to cut with a hacksaw (bit too thick for my craft knife) and then mount onto the hardboard back scene. 

(the basic tile in place) 

Whilst it gave a nice affect the transition from the top of the mirror into the back scene painted cliff was a bit abrupt so I wanted to place something here to cover this up. Scratching around in my offcuts box I still had some corrugated sheet and styrene strip so decided to make a link bridge from the station across the top of the mirror to the ferry for foot passengers. 

(Painting up the bridge) 

(pedestrian Bridge glued in place) 

I decided to use the mirror to my advantage by creating a half A-frame structure with a yellow concrete base and letting the mirror do the rest of the work 

(a-frame in place thanks to some smoke and mirrors) 

(the quayside doubles in length with not much more effort) 

Still working on the station detailing and building the control tower on the cliff which is work in progress.