Progress with the layout can not exactly be described as fast, the last week can be summarised as full of distraction. It started well, I airbrushed the sleepers and sides of the track, both the points I have built and some lengths of SMP flexitrack. The paint I used was Lifecolour acrylic Matt Sleeper Grime, perhaps a little two dark, but at least it gave a nice finish, and took off the plastic shine. I even went as far as to paint the points of the check rails in a sleeper grime colour in an attempt to make then look slightly rusty and dirty where the wheels never go over them.

Having completed this, rather than start the task that was really needed, track laying, I got sidetracked into building the power supply. This itself hit a brick wall when I found I didn't have enough spade connectors to make up the leads needed to connect the power inlet socket, transformer and cutouts. It didn't seem worth a trip to my nearest car accessory shop just to buy a few connectors, at least a 10 mile trip for me. So down from the loft game the baseboard and the process of working out where to place the track started.

Despite the vast amount of planning, ok maybe I exaggerate, that went into the baseboard; the placement of the points turned out to be a problem. The baseboard has two girders running that run from front to back, the spacing of these was just less than the distance between the tie bars of the two outer points. On top of this one of the diagonal members was also in the way. Much shuffling back and forth was needed before the tie bars lined up and space was allowed for the point motors. In my case the point motors are SG90 servos. My aim is to have the servos as close as possible to vertically below the tie bars themselves.

With the positioning of the points settled on, the remaining track pieces were cut to length and the whole lot laid down on the board and drawn around. I then cut C&L foam underlay to match and then glued it down with Unibond PVA. I'm writing this whilst I wait for the Unibond to dry and allow me to continue to prepare for the track laying.

My intention is to use Norman Soloman's method of track laying, so I need to cut and prepare the holes for the wires to activate the points, make the holes for the dropper wires, having first attached them to the track sections. I also need to drill the holes for the uncoupling magnets and fir them before laying the track and ballast. I also need to cut the web on the SMP track to allow the ballast to flow onto the wet glue beneath the track. My next task to tackle will be to paint the cess before laying the ballast on top, I intended to use some grey textured paint for this[EDIT - bad memory, it turns out it was Green Scenes Light Earth. Still it did the job.]. I may also paint the foam, since the C&L stuff is almost black and will show badly of any ballast comes adrift. [EDIT: Painting the foam turned out to be a hopeless task - the paint just soaks in - it would take many tinlets of Humbrol to do the entire trackbase]

Lots of tasks still to do before the track is attached to the baseboard and wring and running of trains can commence. Sadly after this weekend I have a work trip, this combined with some other commitments will probably mean a couple of weeks of no progress on the layout.