The redundant hard standing by the water tower is now overgrown, it was going nowhere and didn’t make any sense, so a careful couple of hours took it back to nature. It also hides the difference in colour of the walls somewhat.

One of the other unforeseen developments recently was the opening up of the second arch of the bridge. It was a dead end originally and was just a spur for reversing direction toward the warehouse. Only the near two tracks went off scenic originally, and it annoyed me that I hadn’t planned for the far track to do the same. A few weeks back I lifted the bridge and office, luckily it was so badly fixed it gave little resistance, remove the buffer and ballast, made a suitable hole in the end panel, found a suitable sharp curve and hacked up an extra fiddle track. It’s only 12” but at least it’s better than nothing. Add it to the list of stuff I could’ve done better.

Everything removable was taken off yesterday and the whole thing was vacuumed. Gaps in the concrete were weed-filled and the retaining walls were glued in place finally. Most are now weathered in, one still to go before the brewery, two on the far side with another gate.

The corners on the brewery are problematic. Normally I use a pencil crayon on the brick folds. I’ve used scalescenes brick to cover most corners on other buildings, but this is the first with offset cornerstones and cutting and folding a long straight corner piece to cover it is not one of my strengths.

I’ve had an idea to create the template in a DTP package, with the cut lines solid and a centre score line marked top and bottom only. If I copy this several times, then put a printed brick texture into the printer, the lines will be printed directly on top (stay with it). I’ll be able to use a knife to mark the score line from the print side, then flip it over and use the marks through the print to score the back so the line is in the right place but won’t damage the print. Now I should be able to fold accurately along the score line and finally flip it back to the front for running a knife down the cut line, as it’s already folded it will be symmetrical. I know it sounds long winded but if you were as clumsy as I am you’d know why!

The canopy on the brewery has been converted to corrugated plasticard, hoping for another good run at it tomorrow evening when all retaining walls might get finished.

Thanks for looking, stay safe.