No, that line never worked for me in the past either! Anyway it's enticed one or two of you in here so there must be a bit of interest! I've recently received the test etchings for the Leeds 600 railcar kit from Mark Hughes (no not the Footballer, he tarnished his copy book by going managing that team that plays at the council house!) These cover the advert boards, walkways, bow and lifeguards, very nice they look too, better get the last bits done on the 600 master bodyshell now.

Whiilst I'm on about etchings, here's a pictutre of the contents of the Chris Cornell Convert kit (is it obligatory for all tram kit manufacturers to have a famous namesake?) It looks like you get a tram and a half almost in this kit as there are spare (rocker panel) body sides if you order the flush sided convert kit (When Leeds City transport converted 3 of their very early balcony cars to enclosed form 3 were rebuilt much more,with flush sides like the 1930s Horsfield cars and raked upper decks, that's the prototype for this kit, the others were less radically rebuilt). So I'll use the spare body sides/bulkheads to make one of the last surving balcony cars.........result!

Pivotal Car 98 is now pretty much glazed, I must be getting more into glazing them now as I find flush glazing most of the windows quite easy now, all the lower deck windows are individually fitted, I'm afraid the upper deck ones are still a strip fitted behind, I actually do have a life!

Pilcher car has survived it's scale 200ft nosedive and is now nearly painted and lettered, shown here in gloss finish before varnish etc. For this one I thought I'd try something a bit different for the ivory band, I cut a 3mm section of water slide transfer paper and gave it a quick blast with the land rover ivory car spray paint I use for the Leeds livery, when dry use as a normal transfer, no problems with cracking and went on very easily, much less hassle than masking it all out, will probably use it again for the white/ivory bands on various cars. Pains me to paint this in Leeds colours should be in Manchester red and white............!

I've recently aquired this row of scratchbuilt terraced house to renovate for the extension to ' Grime Street' unfortunately the roofs were beyond repair and the glazing had detoriated to near amber colouring, however it does give me a great basis for a nice row of houses and by fitting new roofs it should all blend in nicely, which leads me onto the extension, I've been umming and ahhing over what to do with this, varoius thought including Faller bus systems and various locations, I have now come to a decision and I'm going to do the opposite of what a lot of people do, I'm going to fit a model railway to my model tramway! As a kid I grew up near a coal concentration depot and I'd alway fancied modelling a bit of a coalyard etc so to the rear of the trams, I'm going to model a small coal yard, hopefully this will be able to be operated from the front by kids etc at exhibitions, it'll be very much in the idea of a small shunting puzzle with perhaps an 04 or a J72 shifiting a few 16tonners about. So I'm going to have to get back into 'railway modelling' now as It is a long time since I did any. Need to get the baseboard built this weekend so I can get some pics up of the general idea as I have most of the main bits to hand now............