A bit of daylight in the conservatory was the prompt to get on with the slightly fiddly work of making a few more DG couplings! 

The Sonic Models 56XX is a lovely model but greatly benefits from losing the chunky couplers, and having the somewhat less

obtrusive DGs fitted. I made up another two pairs which enabled two 12T vans to be added to the goods fleet, in addtion

to a short rake of 16 tonners (and a Toad!) already one. It's not much but it does allow for some rudimentary testring, which

has already thrown up a few "issues".

Incidentally, these Sonic 56s seem very scarce now. I ordered two (both BR black) but I wouldn't mind a third, perhaps in lined

green. They must have sold very well as none seem to be available anywhere.

The tightest point on the layout is the entry to the longer siding, above. Using the 64XX hadn't indicated any problems, but the 56XX showed a tendency to want to derail the first wagon it was pushing, due to side-thrust from the couplers. Happily the solution was just to turn around the 56 so that it's running bunker-first into the station. The end throw at the smokebox end is a bit less than the bunker end, so no further problems were encountered. (I know 56s tended to run smokebox first "up" the steeply ascending valleys lines, to keep water over the boiler crown, but there must have been instances where they ended up facing the other way, due to reversals and so on).

After playing with shunting moves for a while, I realised I need an additional magnet! It's a good job as once the layout is embedded onto the blue foam sub-base, it'll be a lot trickier to make any electrical alterations. So better to give it a thorough test at this stage than have a nasty surprise down the line. I've also found that subjecting it to a few temperature spikes in the conservatory has helped with identifying areas where rail expansion would have (in fact did) caused shorts, so additional gapping has been added.

Onward!