The vagaries of the calendar meant that the month of May had five Wednesdays, and as a result three of them were so-called Long Wednesdays when the club meets from 2.30 in the afternoon through to 9.30 in the evening. The work this month was pretty heavy on the carpentry front, which can really only be done on the meeting days when there are enough hours to make it worthwhile setting up.

Our carpenter, Lee, delivered the third baseboard frame at the start of the month meaning we now have the set needed for the scenic parts of Phase One. As written in earlier blogs, we have a target of 30 September to aim at when we are expected to be present at the club's joint show with Dorking club, and for that we are working on having the section with the passing station operational and the broad brush of scenic treatment complete. The third baseboard did mean that we couldn't put off making proper legs any more.

In order to keep the legs as light as possible a tee-girder-like arrangement with cross-bracing was drawn up

Adjustable feet are fitted. The fine weather this month meant the first legs could be constructed in the garden. Two Wednesdays a month is not enough time to make the progress we need so work at home is essential.

Now we have the third baseboard we also need to lay track on it. Fortunately it is only a single track so progress was quite swift.

The track bed stops short of the far end because the plan is to cross a watercourse, in real life, Red River, a tributary of the River Arun which flows from Warnham lakes to join the main River Arun just west of Horsham. Warnham lake is formed by a dam and in our period a water mill used the flow to drive its water wheel. The mill is still there and though much of the equipment is still in situ it is no longer functional. Our layout will include a 4mm scale model of the mill building. Drawings are being prepared from photographs and dimensioned from planning documents lodged with Horsham District Council some twenty years ago.

Downloaded brick paper will be added with the correct arches and lintels added - amazing what you can do with computers - and when that is done it gets taken to a local printer to print on the thickest card he has - 500gsm apparently - so we have effectively made our own building kit. The process has been piloted on a home deskjet so confidence is high that it will work.

Meanwhile, in the world of the mundane, the track needs painting prior to ballasting.

The new baseboard legs can also be seen in this picture.

We are using acrylic paints, mixed by our own eyes rather than using Railmatch or similar. The sleeper colours looked fine. This was a mix of Burnt Sienna and  a dark blue and then tweaked with Sap Green and Yellow Ochre. Some discussion ensued about the rust colour of chairs and the sides of rails. A real red oxide seems too bright. Acrylic paint darkens as it dries however so a decision was deferred to the next meeting.