Track laying has ground to a halt… to be honest because I’m finding it hard to get points that work consistently, and this annoyed me so much that I was forced to refrain from modelling and do more work to relax. Which is the opposite of what function the railway it meant to fulfil. I decided to start work on the scenery. As I have written before I am reusing the branch line station and the new main lines drop beneath the branch line boards to new fiddle yards. Like this:

 I have been wondering how to make this look right in scenery. Turning this into summerset countryside. Obviously, I was going to have to have a tunnel, even though the contours would indicate that a cutting would have sufficed. I decided to use ScaleScenes Kits to create both the tunnel portal and the embankment walls. And the scenery has got as far as having the contours built up using a lattice of cardboard strips cut form cereal packets and hardboard formers. There will later be covered with several layers of plaster cloth, brown paint and flocked/static grassed. I’m quite pleased with the results so far.

The secret is to place the harboard contours quite close together and I have a quick tip it is good to turn the carboard lattice so that the shiny printed sides face each other on the underside of each cross. The smaller amount makes it much easier to thread then from the underneath whereas the two rough sides on the upper crosses do not matter so much as you can lift the pull from the end of the strip from above the layout.

I built the embankment wall according to the instructions, although I suspect that the design is possible incorrect as it has Buttresses that are vertical with the wall sloping backwards. As far as I can see all the pictures and diagrams I can find, always have the buttress thicker at the bottom and then sloping in towards the top. This seems logical to me but would give me clearance problems with stock.