I can't believe that it's two and a half years since I last scribbled here. So what's happened in the intervening time...? Bluntly - not enough....! Sure, there are more boxes of 'stuff' collecting dust in the loft of the barn, but, since I've still not finished renovating the house, the 'train shed' itself is still, perforce, down the list of priorities. Perhaps later this year will see it happen - but, no shed - no railway....😐😐😬

     My time being in such short supply, I did commission someone to start on the scratchbuilt buildings, which have turned out very well, but did require a lot of specially-made windows of course. These will, in total, include Tenbury, Easton Court and Woofferton stations etc. Thus all the lineside buildings will be faithful, and I doubt that many original non-railway buildings will be included, as the line side fields were mostly empty of buildings. Although my own house is outside the footprint of the railway, I will, in an abundance of vanity, sneak it in, having spent over a decade renovating it.

     I did even manage to get along the Warley show at the NEC last autumn. A vastly bigger show than the Warley shows of my youth, but rather a mixed bag, and I came away somewhat underwhelmed. Will I bother again this year...? I very much doubt it. I could leave it another fifty years and have my ashes wheeled around in an funerary urn on a trolley I suppose...!

     Surprisingly, I didn't purchase any new locos at the show, just a few discounted wagons and transfers, but having seen the Kernow Models GWR Steam Railmotor running with sound and lights - I subsequently decided to order one a few days later, and we are promised these over this summer - hopefully. This model is available in all liveries, and the earliest, the full Edwardian chocolate & cream, looked and sounded very nice and was my choice. If I'd have built one, I simply couldn't have gained any sort of advantage - especially in terms of finish.

     This delayed start to the actual physical build of the diorama of Woofferton Junction etc does at least have the advantage of allowing my old and addled brain to soak-up more information, and to some extent ameliorate the gap of five decades away from model railways. 

     I never cease to be amazed and humbled by the sheer excellence of some of the output of modellers, both of kits, scratchbuilt, and in terms of scenery/dioramas etc. I'm acutely conscious that I need to ensure that all the niggles/annoyances that I see in lesser creations must not appear in my own efforts. However, I realise this will prove very difficult....!

     Certainly, the output of certain modellers - some well-known, some not, have proven to be very inspirational, and I do return to looking at their works regularly as inspiration.

     All of the infrastructure on my diorama will be set for the Edwardian period. Fortunately, hardly anything ever changed, apart from some minor signalling upgrades. Locos and stock aside, I am hoping to have various swappable elements such as figures and road vehicles, so as to better portray the key periods between 1900 and the curse of Nationalisation.

     I'm still rather daunted by DCC, not because I don't understand it, but it's the potential cost of equipping a lot of locos. I have some ideas for how to tackle this thorny issue, but that will have to wait until I have something runnable.

     Attached are images of the majority of the railway buildings for Tenbury, with only the two signal cabins awaiting windows to complete, and to be clear, these wonderful structures are the work of a friend - not my own hands. We had drawings for only some of these structures, for the rest, we have to size the buildings from large-scale O.S. maps and interpret photographs.

     As will be seen, these structures have followed the methodology used by the experts at Pendon, where the buildings plug-in to the scenery. This gives the huge advantage of avoiding the dreaded 'hovering-building disease' - the ruination of many an otherwise excellent diorama.

     Onwards & upwards...!