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Fantastic to read of progress Pete as I have been following and admiring this one for a long time. The track colour looks excellent and the use of the mirror is great. It certainly had me fooled!! As with all your work, the presentation of the layout is superb. Glad to see you have got some 0 gauge mojo! Hope to see more in due course. David

Nice progress Pete, these free days can sometimes end up a disappointment as you build up expectations but reality then intrudes. However you've clearly made maximum progress here. It's fun to see the old mirror trick come back in use, and very effective and well masked too, even at this stage.

Many thanks NeilHB...the mojo is raging on this one at present...

Looking good Pete - so glad to see progress on Wenford!

It feels like a bit of a waste to bury such nice trackwork under concrete! But nonetheless I look forward to seeing how you tackle it. The real thing was done in two pours - the first pour established a base slab onto which the track was bolted, the second pour brought the concrete surface level with the railhead. The second pour was shuttered on both sides of each rail, and so far I've yet to see anyone model this detail. The idea was that the track could be removed and replaced since the bolts were still accessible. I think you could probably do it with a first pour to fill the gaps between the sleepers, and then glue some styrene angle section either side of the rail up against the chairs to act as a form for the second pour. If you wanted to be super realistic, use some fine sand to partially fill the gaps. In less travelled bits plants and grasses would grow in the sand, another detail perhaps. Another detail I never see on model clay works is hose pipes for hosing down the concrete after loading. The loading edge wall would have spigots and coiled up hoses hanging on hooks. You can see what I mean in this photo on the right hand side just below Elaine.

You'd better pull your finger out and finish this series. I might want try it next weekend with my 4mm HUOs.

Hi Andy, this ticks a lot of my boxes, will be following with interest. On the uncoupling issue, have a think about the Precimodels ones, a la Bournemouth West. Just finished my tenth loco with them on.

You've got standards to maintain Andy, thingummmyjig Quay was rather acceptable! Mike.

I did clock that a few weeks ago; like it! Yup, Little and Large YEs. https://www.flickr.com/photos/95430950@N07/26191858350/

Welcome to the backstreet world of Wolverhampton's foundries. Qualcast was just the other side of the steel mill sitting beneath both sides of the Stour Valley line. The lineage of the business is well described here http://www.historywebsite.co.uk/Museum/OtherTrades/CraneFoundry/Foundry.htm and it's then apparent it's more to do with safes, stoves and tractor bits than cutting grass. And all that got flattened just over ten years ago. A shame.