I've now painted all the sleepers in a more appropriate aged timber colour.

I used a variety of shades of Humbrol enamel, starting by painting each sleeper a light tan, then applying dark brown to the sides, ends and edges, adding some white to the middle, and blending it all together in an appropriate wood grain sort of pattern.

I have also now pinned down the first few lengths of rail. The procedure for fixing it was much the same as on the test length - glue and pin one rail, position second rail with roller gauge, glue and pin it too.

Curved rails were bent to shape using the RCL rail bender. For these Type 2 curves the larger of the two bending radii should be used, but this seems to make no noticeable difference to the rail, so I have bent the rail on the tighter Type 1 setting and then straightened it slightly.

Feeder wires have been soldered to the bottom the the rails at two locations and fed through holes in the top layer of board to the internal cavity. The joints between rail lengths are soldered together for electrical continuity, and will have RCL cosmetic fishplates added once all the soldering (which might melt them) is complete.

Electrics will be on the "one engine in steam" ( or "in sparks?" "in traction?") principle, with one big electrical section covering the whole layout apart from the bits of electrofrog points that need to be switched. If I ever want to have multiple locos on the layout together I will go DCC.

So far I'm finding creating my own track great fun. My laptop is dead at the moment, so pinning and soldering rail is my main entertainment in the evenings. There's something very satisfying about making track in essentially the same way as used on the real thing - I'll have to remind myself not to get carried away and insist on doing everything in such a prototypical-scaled-down manner.