After a suggestion by bcnPete the other day, I nearly did go down the easitrac route, but... At the moment, I'm just going to use up the 80 that I've knocking around, and get my skills back up to snuff before I dive in to anything else. I'm hoping that the other half doesn't realise that this one that's on the workbench at the moment is not the last one to be built. So much the temptation, I've already been lurking around in the 2mm Finescale and wondering "what if?"

Another thing that didn't help adding to the 2mm temptation was the Bachman/Farish Class 04 what I took a few shots of the other day, and with the shots up and done, it looked a lot better than what I thought it did (and I wouldn't consider myself having particularly bad eyesight).

Also, another temptation crossed my path yesterday, as I was out on the usual 'shoot and scoot' newspaper type stuff in the next village, and as I was on my rounds, I popped in to the bar that used to serve the railway station back before they pulled the railways out of here in the late 70's. And as an old bar that used to serve a railway station, it had all the obligatory photos on the wall. One of them showed what looked to be a close relation of the Class 20 drawing a mixed passenger/freight up the main street, and after a quick pace up and down the pavement between the road junctions in the photo, I think I could easily fit both running lines in to a 5' x 1.5' space with the shops behind... But that's on the 'list' of go back and have a look another day. And it's also a bigger excuse for me to go to the FGC railway museum in Martorell with the Nikon and the tape measure, and see what the locos were, and what linage they have.

So all the temptation has been left for another day (apart from the aforementioned 04, which I acquired even though I don't have any idea what to do with it), and I'm going for what I planned the other night.

Most of the buildings I am looking at doing, are going to have to be scratch built, and I'm looking at them, and the bridge that is going to be on the right hand side of the scenic and wondering the best way about this. At the moment, I'm swayed about using a couple of the packages I use for the day to day, and building the plans in Adobe Illustrator as scalable graphics, then 'skinning' the layers up in Photoshop, then printing off on to some good quality matte paper, backing to card and building as if they were a normal card kit. The buildings, I'm thinking of building as their own scenic diorama, on their own board (I've stacks of photo mount card lying around), and I'm experimenting with a power feed system so the buildings can take light straight off a common rail, and can also be swapped out for different regional/time period buildings without having to mess around by unscrewing power clips, and fastening the power clips to the building again.

As for scenics, the general plan is to use cardboard (which is bountiful, living about 100 yards from the local recycling point), built up with papier-mache, and skinned with the stuff that we used when we replaced the ceilings. It's true about Spanish builders, in the apartment, they put in 100m2 of plasterboard type ceiling, and they 'forgot' to put in any supports, and just glued it to the walls. Replacing the ceilings in a year old build was something that made my blood boil, and we've still got the replacement of the floors to do, as they laid tiles on what I reckon was Chobam proving ground, and it's all crazy paving now. And the tiles were an end of line run, as the tile manufacturer was trying to shift them on the cheap, and recently they went to the dogs, so getting a new batch done isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Rant about the Spanish construction industry over, this plaster mix stuff seems fairly flexible and is very light, and I think it would make an ideal grounding for the scenics. Also, as it's white, colouring it at use time I think would be quite easy, by just using the solid poster paint and grinding that off with an old file in to the plaster powder and then mixing it up until the right colour is made, then apply as normal plaster mix.

I've made a start with the track laying, so in due course, photos should arrive...