A general view of the layout as it is today... 'cardboard city' - some buildings sketched in to build up the picture

A good deal of time through the year has been taken up with upgrading the stock - most was put together in the late 1980s and much in need of refurbishment. The Toad has been overhauled with new chimney, new rainstrips, new footboards and handrails: I hope it's now correct for a 1927, 6 wheeled brake.  The Siphon G was scratchbuilt in about '87, all wood construction but now needs some better brake equipment. The Opens and GW vans have been improved and should now be correct for date and type:  the "GW"s are transfers and the lettering is hand done - I haven't quite got that yet but it's improving with practice. There's been a lot of work on the electrical side - all the points and signals are working (servos with Megapoints controllers) with interlocking between points and signals (a good many relays).  Signal building is about 75% complete with the last of the semaphores in progress. Ground signals are yet to be started. Most of the point rodding is complete and signal wires are about to be installed.  There are a few new items of stock - the Slater's twin tank milk wagon (a little anachronistic, arriving in 1927 Swan Hill a few years too soon):  there is a match truck and a rectangular tank wagon tucked in the siding, running but not yet painted and lettered.  In a few months time, when some of the buildings are installed, I'll start on some coaching stock.... but that's for 2022. 

Swan Hill is the first layout I've worked on - I built some test trackwork in the 1980s, enough to decide that O gauge standards (at the time) didn't seem to work very well and so, after a bit of calculation and close observation, I test built some pointwork to 31,5mm gauge and amended other dimensions to suit.  I built most of the stock in the later 1980s, the pannier from a Vulcan kit and then scratchbuilt the Dean Goods.  I see from my shelves that I have copies of MRJ from the first issue, numbered 0, through to about 25 and then a long gap until issues dated 2018 and later: that reflects the story so far... first experiments with 7mm scale models coinciding with MRJ issue 0, a long gap when nothing happened and then beginning Swan Hill in 2018.  I thought I might be finshed by 2027 and, for that reason, decided on 1927 as the nominal date line for the layout.  With progress as it is, that looks a bit doubtful....ah well, we'll see what turns out during the coming year which I will try to document as I go along.

Thanks for looking in during the year and best wishes for 2022.