Since my last post and the return to some modelling, I have been mulling over a couple of things.

1) How often to post blog entries.

2) How could I get a continuous run into the layout.

Number 1. Having not posted really for the best part of a month, coming back to it now, I have come to the conclusion that showing almost daily developments is hard to keep up for me and shows little progress in return for the readers effort to look. So I have decided this year to post perhaps weekly. Hopefully each time you look now, there will be significant changes to see.

Number 2, well I have come up with all sorts of ideas ranging from simple to extreme. What seemed the easiest, was to go out of the front of the shed from one side and loop back in on the other side. In effect closing the existing U shape design into an oval. This would mean having an outside section of track, which I could live with, but the problem was the outside section would loop around the door, creating a duck under before even getting in and also problems with door opening. In the end I discarded this idea.

I gave some thought as to why I wanted to achieve this, which I concluded was just to see trains running while I pottered. I have always come back to this desire, last time I ended up having an N gauge dogbone !

So with revised "why" I came up with a revised plan, I didn't need the continuous run to be part of the existing layout. But if I built it under what I have it is really to low to see or work on, the logical answer was to go up...

So today I have created a 6" shelf around the top of the back scene, this will have an oval of track on it. Scenery will be limited but I'm sure there will be some. The scenery will be somewhat generic though, as I still have a mix of HO, OO and even a couple of On30 items.

The price I have had to pay, is a bit more of a duck to get out of the door, although at 6'1" I had to duck to get out of a shed door anyway.

At the other end the new shelf is deep enough to still store my G scale locos at the back of it, but I may make some additional changes here. Perhaps a shelf a bit higher for one of them, and a matching one at the other end over the door, for the second.

Whilst I had the saws out, I decided to reface the fronts of the lower layout with new valances, as the original ones were tatty and didn't reach all the way to the door.

The last picture also shows the starts of a new building complex that will mask the trains going off stage and under the worktop on the right side of the shed.