The lights and stuff turned up incredibly quickly from Layouts4u so on with finishing the Metcalfe kit.

First thing is to fit the lights. I went for small soft white LEDs, ready resistored for 12V. One got stuck to the ceiling of an upstairs back room and another in a downstairs room. I just cut 'V' notches in the floors so the wires go down the front of the back wall where it meets the extension and out through a hole in the base for one. For the other I 'drilled' a hole at ceiling level, pushed the LED through, and the wires go down through a notch. Lots of glue, I don't want them moving.

And now put it all together

The outside walls go in. I made a blunder here - the gates should be sandwiched between the inner and outer. It didn't feel like the halves were going to come apart without a fight, so I just put the gates in the holes (they are straight now, honest). The toilets get added now.

This all fitted nicely. Leaving things to go off a bit while I have a brew.

And on goes the roof. I was tempted to put a light in one of the toilets just because.

The chimney pots are on, as are the ridge tiles (error No.2 there, but well). You cant really see it here, but the junction between the extension wall and house back wall looks a bit gappy, even though it's completely flush. To this end I used some of the 'spare bricks' provided to make angle pieces to see if this looked better.

It did, so this was glued in and the other side done too. I also did a patch over the join in the outside back wall which looks a lot better for it.

So I put this, together with the other Metcalfe kit on the layout in a place they might go to see what it looks like.

Not the worlds best photo, but I noticed while taking this that the signal box seems very small. And the 08. And the Warship. How odd. I measured the door of the signal box. 6ft 6" as it should be. I measured the top of the 1:43 Land Rover (out of picture), well why not, - 6ft (give or take). I measured the front doors of the Metcalfe houses - a tad over 7ft. They really are over scale! Now I've seen it I can't unsee it. I think either I sell them or make a bit of a side show on a new bit of baseboard to the left of the picture above where they are well away from in-scale stuff. All that effort....

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