Atherington Victoria station's tarmac platform is laid, and more viaduct parapets are made (if not glued in place yet).

I am unsure where all the photographs of the platform's progress are, but pleased the task worked on over several weeks is better than expected.  My heart-felt thanks to @simon b and @Wheatley for giving their expertise on a previous post (no. 40) about making tarmac surfaces.  This is just the basic structure, with more work needed to vary the surface and add details.  I hope the following description might be of use to others.

Gluing the Peco platform sides in position with Copydex, I then glued cardboard strips diagonally between also with Copydex upon which the surface would rest.  Taping together a long strip of newspaper the length of the platform, I laid it over the edges, and pricked out the insides of the stones on each sides, so giving a template to cut around, to transfer to the two halves cut from an A2 sheet of 1 mm. white art card.

The two halves of the card surface were cut out and placed on the platform edges for 'fit', and adjustments made by trimming slivers along edges.  150-grit grade Wilko's 'sandpaper' was cut and glued to the card with P.V.A. glue and weighed down for a week to dry (sandpaper face down).

The two pieces were placed again on the platform, and a 'best fit' made ready to trim and join into one strip.  I ran out of the 150-grade sandpaper, and the second batch was a different colour, accounting for the paler patch to the right.  I will use this to be the end of the cut-back derelict station canopy to be made and installed later, where re-surfacing had taken place.  This is the excuse to reveal the passenger trains; I do not want them hidden.

Shrinkage had occurred after the sandpaper was glued on, so a thin strip of card was added between the two pieces of surface, and then all was glued with more P.V.A. and weighed down with bricks for another week, with many prayers hoping it would not distort or shrink more.

Yester-day I gave it four brief coats of Halford's rattle-can grey primer over half-hour intervals, after four hours gluing it in place with P.V.A. on the top edges of all the diagonal card strips.  Thankfully, only one small area did not fit, which was trimmed this morning.

Weighing the surface down again with as many bricks as I thought it would bear, I hoped it would dry quickly in yester-day's heat, removing the last of the weights after five hours.

Waking early, I checked the whole thing had not 'deconstructed itself' over-night, to my relief and delight.  This is the final result:

With my Orientalist leanings, I had to have 33 025 'Sultan' as the first loco-hauled passenger train in the station.

Now, while detailing the tarmac and pondering passenger positions, I must turn my thoughts to canopies, signals, the warehouse at the other end of the layout...