As Jerry has mentioned, I brought British Oak to the 2017 Warminster Show and thereby hangs another chapter in the saga.  Shortly before the show, I decided that the layout needed some smartening up, something I'd long planned to do. Unfortunately, I have a habit of putting all my roundtuits in a very safe place and then forgetting where I'd left them. By the time I'd remembered where the British Oak roundtuit was stored, it was pretty close to the show date, like the Wednesday before the show!

The first job was to cover over the point and uncoupler controls. I had originally left them open just in case of any problems but as they'd survived ten or so years without problem, it seemed reasonably safe to cover them in. The first step was to sheet over the area with some shaped cardboard, in this case the back of an MRJ subscription envelope. The card was glued in place with PVA and held in place by pins, then given a through coating of PVA. When this dried, it made a nice hard shell, thin and with a bit of resiliency.

Once the PVA had set reasonably hard but was still wet, I cut some strips from the front of the MRJ envelope and laid them over the cardboard again with PVA glue.
Please note, other finescale envelopes may be available...

After the strips were in place but while the PVA was still drying, I painted on a thickish layer of tinted Sandtex paint.

The reason for working with the PVA wet is that the whoe thing bonds together and forms a very robust shell for the scenery.  In fact it took a couple of coats to hide the paper strips but when it was done, it blended in quite well.

In fact I had used the same technique of paper strips and Sandtex to cover the polystyrene landforms. The Sandtex was tinted with artists acrylics. I have found subsequently that Indian Ink works just as well and possibly better as it seems to mix more throughly. Final colouring was done with washes of artists acrylics blended directly on the layout.

This took care of the top surface and covering in the ugly open areas massively improved the overall look of the scene.

Encouraged by this, the next move was to tidy up the front and back sides of the layout. I needed to keep the width within the confines of the storage box so a thin but strong sheet material was required. The solution was 1.5mm aeromodellers plywood. Some extra polystyrene blocks were inserted to provide some support and the front and back were skinned with the plywood. Cutting out was done using a Stanley knife. The following photo sequence shows the process.

The plywood skins were blended in with a thickened mix of tinted Sandtex and filler. There's a bit of theme here, still if it's good for ten or more years on the outside of your house, it ought to stand up well in this situation.  The final result was a much smarter looking layout and fortunately, everything dried out in time for the Warminster show, as can be seen from Jerry's earlier photo.

The next phase is to work up some more scenic detail and that is what is currently happening, ready for the layout's forthcoming appearance on the 2mm Scale Association's stand at Scaleforum.

I've been really enjoying following this build and the quality modelling that's going on. That halt just screams 'Chard Branch' to me. Have you got any further updates to report?