So far 'Castell Mawr' has proceeded at a steady crawl, but those gentle steps now give me 10 working layout boards with all 7 point decoders fully functional working my selection of points. The last posting shows the North end cutting taking on it's base plaster in preparation for adding grass and asorted other greenery.

What I have done is to forget the Southern 180 degree section on two boards that sit just shy of 6 inches lower than the rest of the layout. On these I want a resin river, water meadow, main road running close to the river edge with the railway crossing the river and road twice.

I began today ..... and the height at first looks almost frightening.

Here we have my first 'artistic' planning ...... you know, put it down and see what it looks like !!

My lorry is in a layby, the road outline is clearly seen. Where the joining beams are the road section will be cut down to around 1" high.

Now here with a photo taken at river surface level you can see how high my tracks will be.

It may look high, but I'm certain it should look right when all the surrounding landscape is added (I live in hope)

Getting these boards right is something of a test, but I wanted a reasonable rise & fall of landscape over the 21 feet of layout. I've managed about 1 foot from the highest fields above the cutting to river surface ...... Oh and 4 bridges to dream up, this will take some time.

Geoff T.