...as BR were fond of saying at one point.  Wednesford and Wombourne v2.0 is now in the final stages of completion, with ballast laid at Wednesford, and some overdue tidying up of some dodgy modelling.  Longer term I intend to install street and building lighting and passive provision has been made by raising the scenic boards by about a centimetre.  Today was the first chance I had to see all the boards in place alongside the station (I still have a little work to do on the Swan Centre scenic module) and it's surprising just what raising the level of the "land" a scale two and half feet has done to the overall perspective.  The station seems to be even more hemmed in by the town, which was pretty much the effect I was aiming for.

Ballast laid and tidied.  Still to do, filling the gap between Aunty Edna's and the retaining wall with hedge and scrub.  Also, some selected weed growth in the extra-large six foot, although not too much as up until the mid 90s the railway wasn't too bad at keeping the weeds down.

Looks like the local vandals have thrown some platform signs onto the roof

View towards the tunnel under the old part of town.  Intercity preaching to the converted who are already on the train.  The idea is the station was severely rationalised in the mid 1960s, so the platform buffet and concrete canopies are all concentrated at one end of the station, there's a single lift tower and open sided stairwell, it's all a bit grim and reflects the fact Wednesford very nearly lost it's station and train service.

The "first class" end of the platform.  When planned for rebuild, the intention was to have only a token Inter-city service with an EMU shuttle to Birmingham being the main service provision, so no facilities were originally provided at the London end of the platform.  Eventually, as service levels increased, and complaints along with it, two blue brick and concrete waiting rooms were built along with gents and ladies loos.  Premium ticket holders still have to dodge Postman Pratt and his yellow tug with BRUTEs rattling behind.

The recycling bins are not in their final place.  Quite apart from the lack of respect sticking a recycling centre in front of the entrance to St Flo's, it neatly highlights the perils of using 1960's continental HO scale buildings which, it turns out, aren't quite HO.  HO is of course about 12% smaller than 4mm scale, so you do have to be careful putting buildings next to each other, but Faller and Vollmer in the 1960s made some kits to an even smaller scale, somewhere closer to 1:90.  I've carefully grouped buildings of roughly the same scale, and tried to avoid using 4mm scale scenic objects or people close to them, but in this case, a brain-fart meant I put the bins here instead of next to the multi-storey car park!

The police/Government buildings scenic module has been raised and rests on the knob-pins in order to allow me to add lighting in the future, but St Flo's remains at baseboard level.  It was built on a redundant corner shelf which was slightly deeper than the ply scenery module bases, so I'm tempted to leave St Flo's in the dark and keep the base at the current level, with a nice, scale step down into the churchyard from the footpath.  This angle also shows the ruins of the old chapel more clearly.

It's still the summer of Love in the peace garden.

Some spare concrete trunking has allowed me to tidy up the Councillor's car park at the Civic.  Must be full council day judging by the number of cars in there.

The former low level station entrance and forecourt has now been rebuilt to include the Bank of Bitch, and the old post office access now repurposed as a very tight public short stay.  I need to move the man in the BR boil in the bag anorak, who is still waiting for a lift back to Bescot despite the station having vanished behind him, and the two tiny Japanese tourists need to be relocated to outside the main entrance waiting for a taxi to take them to Crossroads.

This area was the old goods yard, hence the retaining wall, but was destroyed and never rebuilt in the War.  After the war the British Railways Board teamed up with Wednesford Borough Council to redevelop the land, which helped financially to keep the station.



When BRB decided not only to keep the station, but to electrify the line, the old, narrow Station Approach was rebuilt, the road widened and linked to the new inner relief road. This allowed Market Place and Market Street to be pedestrianised, and the station was built alongside the site of the upper level goods offices which were demolished to widen the road, whilst in their place a small parade of single storey shops was built.  The crass concrete planked portal of the tunnel contrasts markedly with the retaining wall of the old goods yard.

"Drone" shot of the full length of the layout, showing how the station is tucked away behind the town.  Not how most modellers choose to create their models, but personally I quite like the idea you are sat in a 20 storey block, the other side of the inner relief road, gazing down on the station wedged in between the new Civic quarter, the old Market Square, and the industrial zone beyond, whilst Aunty Edna's factory wafts the smell of peppermint over the town (apparently it is possible to get peppermint oil for home diffusers, so in addition to Bluetooth speakers for ambient sound, I will probably have the scent of Minty-Koffs wafting across the layout!)

And finally...Anna Logue is still grilling Councillor Wright-Burke over his "Cod for Votes" scandal, where as owner of the "In Cod we Trust" chain of chippies, he provided free chips to his voters in the local election, in contravention of electoral legislation.  She's now been joined by the cameraman, Mark Coney, to film the interview for "Wednesford Today" at 6.30pm.

Oh yes, and there's a new canopy roof on the Courts building, a 3d print recycled off the old lower level entrance.