I have just returned from a very relaxing and very needed 2 week holiday in France. I had always said to my future father in law that I would help him build a layout and seeing as it was not possible for me to do much in the way of physical activity at the moment he suggested that I make a start on the layout. We had a few trips to the DIY store where we purchased the trestles and other bits needed to get some track down.

We used some old doors which were joined together to form a decent size board for the layout. Over the boards I glued some green fibre board that was acting as a substitute for cork underlay. It has worked very well as an alternative and has a few benefits over cork in the colour (being a not too garish form of green reduces the need to paint it) and the ease of chopping it to size. The best benefit was the price. We got a huge pack for 15 Euro's which could do about 8 metres square. The same amount in cork would have been a fair amount more.

A trip to the model shop in Limoges to get a few supplies and a plastic kit was purchased for the station building. Following a few different track designs we eventually decided two running loops with some sidings off the main exterior loop for storing trains and shunting. The interior loop will have to wait to get its storage sidings because the points that were in the box of track were not electrically isolated (what were Lima thinking???!!!).

By the end of the holiday the kit of the station had been built but not completed (just needed work on the details!) and the loops were in a good enough state to run trains around. My future father in law had even managed to get the Trans Europe Express working again (I had been unsuccessful and thought it needed a new motor!!!, it now runs magnificantly!).

Also while I was in France I hatched a plan to build another new layout. This would be a modular extentsion to my current one but also built in such a way so that it could be exhibited. I have had a fair few thoughts on this and I will post more once I have my sketches loaded into the computer.