With most of the underlay now complete I was hoping to actually lay some track this week. However, my conviction that the horizontally placed drawer runners on the fiddle yard wouldn't be a problem proved to be misplaced. My idea of a guide worked only up to a point and was proving problematic. Undeterred I quickly redesigned them and modified the down yard to a traditional vertical placement. With the benefit of hindsight, I don't know why I didn't just do it like this in the first place as alignment was OK.

All of this took time so a lot less tracklaying resulted. The first section of track is now placed in the down yard. To save money (but not time) this is constructed with copper clad and alternate C&L plastic sleepers from some scrap track that had been lifted.

Work will now continue on the track for the two fiddle yards - hopefully the weather will stay pleasant (fat chance with a bank holiday) and I can work on the patio rather than in the shed.

Having used cork underlay for flooring that's quite thick, thoughts turned to how to create the ballast shoulder shape. Some household DIY this weekend provided inspiration in the form of decorators caulk. A bead was applied to several areas and then moistened and scraped with an edge of card. Once dry it retains a slight flexibility. It's designed to be painted over so I don't see a problem with paint/glue sticking to it. However, it's easy stuff to remove if it doesn't work too well. The first attempts are shown here - it's shrunk slightly as it dried so another application may be required.