Since a request was made for photographs of my progress, while I did say that there were no real visual changes, I have decided to show an overall view of the underside of my baseboard as of when it was upturned two or three weeks ago and a couple of scratchbuilt items, namely a Park Shelter and a Bus Shelter. The Park Shelter was originally intended to be the Bus Shelter, but it turned out too rustic so I built another one. The Park Shelter has suffered vandalism (actually to avoid overbalancing I placed my hand where I could with the misfortune of flattening the Shelter) It has been subjected to some botched up repairs but, in times of crisis what can one expect? In any case, on a layout not everything has to be perfect and if you move about the countryside you can see many examples of such a situation.

I am rather pleased with how the Bus Shelter turned out. It is made with Balsa wood floor, wall panels, seat and roof, toothpicks as uprights and the roof tiling is made from strips left over from a Metcalfe kit. I have also made some shelters for a pedestrian subway to the north side station, but I am not too happy with the ones to be placed on the platforms and I have to revise the lettering on the roadside shelter.

To-day has seen another three-hour session recovering terminal pins and lengthening four leads that turned out to be too short for the new tidier system of a separate hole for the leads of each point switch. New terminal pins are not cheap and I would have to order them from the UK, so I set about opening up crimped ones and desoldering soldered ones and then soldering new lengths of wire to four of them I then cut off the terminal pins of the short leads, formed a twisted and soldered joint with the new portions and covered the joint with a piece of plastic tube. I then plugged them in to their respective switch and they worked. All quite homemade and probably unorthodox.Also, after some days in which my printer has been playing up not wanting to accept a refilled cartridge I have been able to print out a brickwork pattern.