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Aplogies for not replying sooner, I have only just noticed your post. Thank you for you kind comments. I have tried many different alpines on the layout, some have survived well, others have died. This past winter has been hard on the layout that lives outside in the garden all year. We had a period of excessive rain which made the soil very wet, it then froze in temperatures down to minus 8 deg, followed by a month of no rain and then just recently more excessive rain again. The Thymes have survived all this the best. There are several varieties such as Bressingham Pink, Russetings and Hartland Gold. The next most prolific is Leptinella, again several varieties, the commonest was Platts Black but this suffered badly from the minus temeperatures, but there are many signs of new shoots now as Spring progresses. As you say, there is Pratia Pendunculata in two varieties, Alba, with white flowers and Blue Star with pale blue ones. A good ground cover with tiny leaves is Mentha Requinii, also known as Corsican Mint. This has proved very hardy, unlike Solerolia (Mind your own Business) which has died completely this winter. A couple of others that have died are Sagina and Scelranthus Others have had varying degrees of success. These include various Saxifrage, Sedum, Asperulia, Raoulia, Isotama etc. I have tried to choose alpines with the smallest leaves. This is difficult when ordering on-line as the descriptions always refer to their flowers, not their leaf size. Ice Alpines have been a useful source. But mostly I have bought them from a variety of garden centres and garden shows so that I see them physically before buying them. Some of the conifers at the back will need replacing this summer as they look to be dying very slowly. Other alpines have been easily replaced if they die, I cut out a circle of soil and drop in a replacement. Hope that helps, the layout will be at the Peterborough show next wekend.

This Winter has not been kind to our garden or my Pen-Y-Bont layout. A week of torrential rain, followed by nights of -8 deg, followed by 6 weeks with no rain at all and just when you thought Spring might be around the corner, now back into Winter snow and freezing cold. Still the layout has survived despite mother nature: In warmer times last summer: And now loaded into the van, a complete garden railway, ready to go to Midlands Garden Rail show this weekend for its first public appearance: See you there!

If you buy your locos on the internet from a man in a shed and don’t support the dwindling number of model shops, then they will all be history. If you don’t go to exhibitions and support the local model railway club, they too will be history. I have an exhibition layout that I haven’t the space to use at home so look forward to taking it to exhibitions as an opportunity to operate it. Fortunately, I have my own van to transport it and this figured in my design of layout. Otherwise, I would build a layout of a size to fit whatever vehicle I had available. I do not charge for any expenses, petrol or accommodation, as the exhibition is for my enjoyment of the hobby. If I go out somewhere for the day, I either take a packed lunch and a drink with me or I buy it from a local source. I do not expect exhibitions to provide this to me for free and don’t see why they should. You wouldn’t get this if you went anywhere else for a day out. Every hobby or leisure pastime requires an investment of your time and money. If you can’t or don’t want to, then our hobby doesn’t have much of a future as we know it.

Full list of layouts and traders now on the Statfold website

First frost of the winter and the vegetation continues to spread. Not much of my homemade slate ballast left on show now. Compare with the earlier pictures I wonder what this winter will bring

It's iron powder, bought on the internet. The wagons are left permanently outside on the layout in all weathers, so naturally rust. You can speed up the process with copper sulphate solution or other acids.

slate wagons:

Been building some rolling stock, but not in the manner most might do, I dislike pristine stock and love rust. An etched brass slaters skip wagon: A pair of plastic skip wagons and a Slaters etched brass slab wagon

I did try using miniature magnets on the coupling hooks, but soon abandoned the idea. I now use a small 'L' shaped piece of steel wire (welding rod) glued to the hook and use a long magnet (75mm) buried in the track ballast, so polarity immaterial. I painted white marks on the rail side facing the operator to mark the limit of travel in either direction in which the hook will lift

You won't believe the transformation

Thanks Guys regarding zigzag comment, I have run a slomo fitted loco up a 1 in 20 gradient with no apparent change in performance. The slomo only really controls the acceleration and de-acceleration rate, not the overall running. I have already successfully transported the layout to a small exhibition as a test and all was well. Here it is loaded in the van... And at the exhibition...

Hi Ade correction to the date for Bracknell, it's Saturday 30th Oct not the 31st Have you got a video of your Billy, I would like to see its performance without a slomo, I have yet to see a comparable performance. I use rotary knob transmitters based on Deltang, (the same as C2B) but If I disconnect the slomo there is an immediate change in performance no matter how much I try to control the loco as you suggest.

Thanks Giles But it's not all my fault, I blame Terry Robinson in Australia who produced the Slomo, without which a small end to end layout would not be feasible. I had previously given up using my Roundhouse locos for quite a while as their slow motion performance just wasn't good enough for me. Out of interest, I recently disconnected the Slomo and the change in performance was staggering. Other cosmetic changes to my loco are coal guard rails on the spectacle plates and some cab doors. Since the photo was taken, I have removed the rear coal bunker and now have a flat cab back like yours to slightly reduce the length of the loco further. I also shortened the chassis by removing 10mm from the front end. The smokebox was removed and separated from its mounting plate. The front buffer beam was removed along with the frame spacer immediately behind it. The frames were cut using a fine toothed junior hacksaw. The smokebox mounting plate was similarly reduced by 10mm. New frame spacer holes were drilled in the frames so that the frame spacer could be refitted behind the buffer beam. New right angled brackets were made from pieces of 10mm brass angle and secured to the rear of the buffer beam. Two new holes were drilled in the side frames to secure these angle brackets to the frame to re-affix the buffer beam. Here's another Lady Anne chassis with a modified Katy Body Elsecar 16mm exhibition is on for the 25th of this month and I will be exhibiting Hambleden there. A bit closer to home, it will also be at the Bracknell Railway Society show on 31st October. Steve

I think you should fit a Union Link and Combination Lever, available as spares from Roundhouse. It improves the look of the valve gear. Here's my Lady Anne as seen on Hambleden

Looks very good. I find with these engines that the gas runs out before the water, so topping up the boiler doesn't help. I find it near impossible to add more gas as the gas tank gets hot and the increased pressure is greater than that in the can trying to fill it. I use a small fan betwecan runs to cool the tank down before I can fully refill it successfully. Sometimes you can add a small amount of gas if the filling can is a full one but it invariably only adds another 5 mins of run time.