andyram

It certainly has inspired some of my changes to Skaleby North Yard (now Skaleby East).

Morning all. Great picture from Dave. It is good that you are finding some times of calm in these difficult times. Your walks, music and caring for the birds are obviously very helpful for you. Gordon.S I am so sorry to hear your news. Dementia is such a horrible thing to deal with. My Grandma developed it in her nineties as well. Much of what you describe happened with her too. It all seemed to develop very quickly. My thoughts are with you. I will join in with the birthday wishes for HRH. Last week we had a whole week in school devoted to the birthday celebrations. The children were involved in all kinds of activities. They made a large picture of the Royal coat of arms, designed a new stamp, made silhouette pictures of the London skyline, learnt about events during the Queen's life, made birthday cakes, learnt about British values, made crowns and even planted a wild flower garden in honour of HRH with their seeds marked by Union Flag markers. It all finished with a garden party on Friday afternoon. All the children dressed in red, white and blue, ate party food and their cakes and had a great time. And then there was the moment that "made it all". We had music on in the background, during the party the song, written for her Jubilee, came on the CD player. "Sing" is a favourite amongst many of the children. All of a sudden the whole school broke into song, some joined into groups with some of the boys linking arms to belt it out in a rather tuneless fashion. It was so spontaneous and magical. Fortunately I captured it all on video. Sadly, due to the size of the file, and safeguarding issues I am unable to share it on social media. However it is on the school's website. It is moments like that which make the job worthwhile. Enjoy your day.

Evening all. As previously explain, the dreaded report writing marathon has limited my time on here recently. I have skimmed through much of what I have missed and will offer the generic congrats and commiserations to those as appropriate. Special thoughts and words for Dave and Is of course. I made sure I read all of your updates in detail. I am so sorry to hear that these difficult times are being made more difficult by actions of relations. It does sound like you are making the right choices, given the circumstances. My thoughts remain with you both. Not finished the reports yet, but took a break today in order to visit the model railway show at Bakewell. It has become an annual visit. We always meet the inlaws there. I go around the show with FiL whilst Sarah and her mum take Amber off around the town. We seem to need an equal amount of time for both visits so it works well. Today was no different with Sarah texting me to say they had finished just as we were ready to leave the show too. As regards the show it was ok, but not the best I have been to. A few too many layouts requiring the intervention from the big hand from the sky. The scenic modelling on show was good, if not spectacular. A couple of reasonable models and a couple of absolute dross! I did not spend much, but did buy a building for my new micro layout (see relevant thread). It was enough to inspire an afternoon of modelling. Amber fell asleep in the car on the way home and thus did not sleep tonight. The result was I ended up watching the first half of the England game on my IPad whilst in her bedroom. She ended up joining us downstairs for the second half and has only just gone to sleep. I think she may be tired tomorrow! Enjoy your weekend!

It has been a few weeks since I last posted in this thread and there has been a very good reason for that. A hectic period at work has taken me away from working on the layout. It is now highly unlikely that I will get it ready for the Weston show in November. I think another reason for the slow progess was a real loss of inspiration. I had not been happy with my various track plan attempts and had made so many alterations to the project. Today, motivated by a trip to the Bakewell Model Railway show, I did some more work on the layout. The track plan has now been finalised. It will feature an island platform with a single track on one side and a run round loop to the track on the opposite platform face. From the loop there will be two sidings, one for freight and another for a small loco shed. A siding off the single platform line will serve a low relief factory at the rear of the layout. Today I have laid the cork underlay for the track so there is no going back. The current progress is shown below. This means the layout has changed focus to include passenger facilities. As a result the "North Yard" title no longer fits. The project has been renamed "Skaleby East". I will change the thread title once I find out how to do it!

Thanks for the offer. I must admit that scratch building is far beyond my modelling capabilities at the moment. My aim is to get part of the line laid during the next few weeks. I have a plan and a back story to the line. I am hoping to post more details soon.

I decided to avoid 00 for the time being as I was worried by the maintenance of a ground level 00 line. I may still build something outdoor in 00 some time in the future. As regards the G scale project, I have shopped around online - mainly EBay, and purchased 12 pieces of straight track and 12 curves. I have also purchased a flat wagon and now have a loco too. I will probably start a dedicated blog or just update this one. I now have a plan and made some progress. I will post more details soon.

Such poor use of the English language. I am so glad my student teacher writes better than you lot.

Grammar and spelling so important according to education minister!

Should that be THEIR communication????

Did not realise you knew my neighbours

Never mind. I had a feeling the store would be too long. There are two other options of course. A) you could extend the front of the layout to add more harbour and then place the store next to the shop at the front. Or B) you could build ANOTHER layout!!!!

The house looks better than the warehouse Andy, but agree the warehouse gives the port some meaning. Would the shed fit across the end of port in low relief, where the store is? Store could take the place of the house.

The garden seems a good place to me.

Evening all. I enjoyed reading the Tapas tale, but really felt sorry for those whose night out was ruined by a combination of an incompetent restaurant and a BiL who could not behave. It did sound like a dreadful evening. Today has been another scorcher. Typical that, as the schools return, the weather decides to improve. I took a few cakes in today as a small celebration of my passed course. There were some kind congratulations, whilst one or two could not be bothered. Mind you a couple of people seem to have gripes with me at present - but if they chose to read their emails they would have been better prepared for the expectations coming their way. The first day back, was like all others, full of problems and a mounting workload. We are into report writing season which always takes a while. It may explain why I may be absent from these pages on some days. Take care all.

I watched the show and enjoyed it more than last week's episode. I believe some of the studio sections were shot in the past week and that could be clearly seen with the introduction. Matt Le Blanc had also been given a more lead role and the show was better for it. I enjoyed the SUV film much more than the Reliant Robin challenge. The added use of guests worked well with Eddie Jordan proving to be the weak link. I am still not sure about the interview section surrounding the star in the car, but I do like the rally cross variation on the theme. In my opinion an improvement on last week.

Birthday greetings to Peter BB another of the true gents of this forum.

Hey Mr Tambourine Man - Bob Dylan

Morning all. I hope you had an enjoyable Saturday. Sorry to hear of chrisf's car problems. I hope you get it fixed in much less time than you expect. I agree it does sound like a more serious problem though. A shame that it will cause you to miss DEMU. It is always a good show if you are of a modern image persuasion. Although I model steam I have visited a couple of previous events and enjoyed them as there is some high quality modelling on show. Grandadbob I hope you have a good day with the grandchildren. Jamie - I hope the church service goes well and that Beth is not in too much pain with her broken toe. Unbelievable that someone was just so desperate for a free chocolate bar. I suppose if she is less mobile it will give you more time to hide your modelling purchases! Perhaps you should stock up on some more things whilst you have the chance ;-) Here in Derby things have dawned cloudy, but with the promise of warm and sunny weather later. That was how it worked out yesterday with the sun breaking through in the afternoon to provide a gorgeous second part of the day. We had quite a busy day which included more work in the garden. The rear flower bed has been extended, populated with more new plants and edged by the small wooden fencing bought yesterday. I also collected the box of G scale track and finished the day by laying part of the foundation. Sarah has made no protest about the plan for the railway to circle the entire back garden (no wonder i married her). We finished the day with one of the M and S meals for two and a couple of beers each. A nice end to the day and some welcome and much needed time together. Today Sarah is off to church. More than likely Amber will not want to go so I will look after her and we will help Sarah by beginning the mammoth collection of her Avon books. Then we have the in laws over for a BBQ this afternoon. Enjoy your day.

Mixed in with

Winners: Germany England - out in the second round. Outsiders - Belgium. Surprises - Wales.

Dancing Queen - ABBA

Morning all. Thanks for the congratulations. Sarah and I cracked open a bottle of bubbly in celebration last night. I am tempted to burn the course folder today as it contains very little that I actually need. Most of the useful stuff is stored electronically. Today's plans are very loose again. I cannot see us venturing too far as both of us have head aches after last night's consumption. We did not get much chance to sleep it off either. Amber wet the bed again last night, the second night in a row, so she came into our room at about 10.30pm and did not go to sleep until midnight. She woke up at 7am this morning and I had already been awake for about an hour. I could not sleep so got up, had an early breakfast, and caught up on some more bits of school work. Later today I do have to go out to pick up another EBay purchase. I won a consignment of straight G scale track last night. Since the seller resides in the city centre I can save postage and collect it. More great pics Dave. I hope you find Is in good spirits today. A big thanks to Andy.p for posting pictures of the order of service from yesterday. I hope that yesterday's long trip does not leave you too tired today. If anyone is heading to DEMU I hope you have an enjoyable day. I doubt I will be going as modern image is not really my interest. I have been to the show before, and enjoyed it. However I am saving money for next week's Bakewell event and the G.C show the following week. Enjoy your day. And RIP Muhammed Ali - another legend who leaves us in 2016.

Yes I agree

Afternoon all. Like many I am waiting for posts from Andy.p for news on the funeral. I hope our friend got a good send off. A busy day today accompanying Sarah and Amber around a multitude of shops. This was followed by the promised trip to McDonalds which was not as bad as I thought it would be. I picked up some more plants from the garden centre so I will be back out in the garden shortly to plant them. Some good news has arrived this evening. An email brought the results of the leadership qualification I have been undertaking over the last 18 months. I had struggled to fit the work in around family and the day to day school work. As a result I was not confident, but.....I passed! That is a huge weight off the shoulders. The champagne is now chilling in the fridge.

I do like the look of the Play Mobil set with the yellow diesel and am considering that. I know that I want metal track because it will give me the greatest flexibility. I can run track powered, battery / R.C or even live steam on such track. Also, as the garden is south facing and parts get a lot of sun I would be concerned about the effects the extreme temperatures would have on plastic track. So far I have purchased 12 pieces of metal curved track and a small flat wagon. These have not arrived yet.