Last Friday the new wall behind the yard started to take more form. This will be a concrete retaining wall, holding back the hillside. In addition, the bridge carrying the roadway over the branch line has been moved forward in preparation for the road to be divered on a bridge across the tracks and towards the front of the layout.

The base for the hillside is polystyrene, with a foamboard facing. This will be covered by Scalescenes 'Concrete Walling' over the next couple of weeks. Further support braces are being added before the next level of hillside is added. The small section of track running behind the yards will also be boxed in, before the hillside covers this area.

The Kato offices that were in the yard are now to be moved closer to the station, more or less in the shadow of the new road bridge, which will be carried over the tracks on fairly chunky concrete pilings. The who effect is intended to restrict the space a little more, hopefully conveying more of the compact nature of urban Japan than the layout does currently.

A mock-up of the bridge, designed mainly to get the curve right, and be clearly seen in the first picture. The suro 81 carriages hauled by 'Profiterole' (see earlier posts!) give an indication of height, although the bridge will have a gentle arch as it crosses the railway.

The next couple of pictures show the latest arrival, yet another EF64 has joined the fleet; the Kato blue example. We now have a fleet of seven of these locos (from the three main manufacturers - Kato, Tomix and Micro AcCe)...about right for the Chuo line I would say!

Finally for Yamanouchi Oshika, 'Profiterole' demonstrates the banking on the downgrade curve heading into Yamanouchi Oshika quite effectively. This banking allows us to have occassional daft moments and run full speed Bullets without launching them into orbit!

Also notable for the club is the start of a U3A course run by Tony. This has proved to be popular and a number of people have showed up from as far afield as Petworth and Bishops Waltham - quite a wide catchment area. The course is covering all aspects of railway modelling, through from baseboard construction and wiring to research and scenery.

For a small club like ours it is important not only to maintain a profile on the exhibition circuit and within the modelling world, but also (and perhaps more importantly) the local community. Activities such as this course, due to run for a number of weeks, and our open day at the end of next month, are all intended to 'spread the word' of railway modelling - in all its wide variety - as well as to say to the local community 'Look! We're here!'.