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They absolutely are, I have mine too! Pictures to follow later today....

Its happening!

Excellent intel, thanks for sharing! I've gone all in for a DCC sound one. Spectacular! I do wonder if Arnold will tackle the E444 if the Caimano is a success (as it surely will be ) - it would make a natural complement, although appreciate Pirata do offer an updated version of the Mehano E444 tool. Either way, if there was only ever the E656 from Arnold I would have absolutely no complaints!

I am delighted to come across some pictures of the E656's on the Arnold Facebook page, seemingly images of the final models - lets hope they ship soon!

@fezza superb stuff, thanks for sharing. Sanremo station is where it all started for me! No sign of the Arnold E656 yet - the website still states "summer 2021"... I agree that modern era coaching stock is thin on the ground, although XMPR Eurofirma can be hunted down with some persistence. I assume this will change as it seems slightly odd that all other eras in coaching stock are better covered!

Thanks Chris! 10x4 is certainly a good chunk of space in N, I am a serial layout sketcher and so looking forward to working through a few design iterations. As trailed earlier, my 'other' interest is the Midland mainline through the Peaks and so the space will probably be used for that with Liguria as my 'Italian bit on the side'. A solely Italian 10x4 has certainly crossed my mind though!

Lockdown Liguria is on the move! We've had a busy time completing on and moving house - it turns out that Liguria is, entirely inadvertently, a made to measure fit for the back of my car and, because it is so light, was very easy to move! It is pictured in the new railway room - and yes, that is a 10x4 space that needs filling...

Haha, love it - it did cross my mind in construction that if you had some easily exchangeable details you could possibly create a layout that was 'dual country'. And thank you very much, there's something satisfying about a simple layout that you can actually finish without it feeling like an undue burden. I am mostly in the 'playing trains' phase with Liguria now!

@MandraStation thank you very much for the kind words and welcome, its great to meet another Italophile on Rmweb! Italian railways certainly do combine some unique elements and yet are perhaps relatively overlooked (vs France/Switz/Germany) - also hoping that the improvements in N continue, certainly railways modellers in general are benefitting from more and more RTR models of the more obscure prototypes so perhaps Italian N will yet come of age! A family connection to the Adriatic coast sounds like a perfect excuse for a layout!

I decided to get the camera out and do some 'proper' photos; I still need to teach myself image stacking but I'm really happy with this one of the E483 with the XMPR stock

In Italy, on the Ligurian coast, an E483 heads west on a test run with a rake of XMPR Eurofima stock. In a few years, this single track section of line will become a bike path with the opening of a new double track alignment inland.

I've also had another successful poach - a pair of Interfrigo vans in the later (my preferred) livery with the oblique 'Interfrigo' lettering and a snowflake graphic: In the spirit of "there's a prototype for everything", I was pleasantly surprised to discover this picture of an Interfrigo van at Peak Forest (after delivering 'milk products' to Buxton from Europe): http://www.manlocosoc.co.uk/chulme/slide-webone-off.cgi?ch-005&62 The Midland mainline through the Peaks is my 'other' main interest, I just never expected that I could legitimately have dual use stock for both Liguria and the Peak District!

I'll keep my eye out!

Hi Chris, absolutely - please do ask away! I'm not going to claim they are supposed to be Bougainvillea but they do seem to work, I actually got a lot of the 'flowers' from War Painter Scenics on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/6mm-Flower-set-tufts-117/dp/B086S8WH42/ref=sr_1_40?dchild=1&keywords=Warpainter+scenics&qid=1614501969&s=kids&search-type=ss&sr=1-40 No connection but the prices seem good to me and as they are self adhesive 'blobs' they are very easy to plant almost anywhere! Thank you - its really nice just to be able to switch it on and operate it as I want now

This is not a scenic update - but it is an important one! Unfortunately, my passing loop wasn't operable - the long live frogs on the Fleischmann points always shorted when set to the inner diverging line and a train passed over, thwarting my plan to be able to alternate trains in opposite directions! I've solved this by simply swapping to insulfrogs for the curved points forming the loop (running hasn't been affected, no stalling) which also required another power feed to be added to the second loop line and most of the 'off stage' track was relaid in the process. So, it looks the same, but it now the loop actually works! All this meant I had to move the layout which meant I could get a photo of the galleried tunnel section - not often seen as its usually tucked against a wall!

@weave welcome to RmWeb and thank you very much indeed for such a generous and thoughtful comment, its very much appreciated! When I started, I never expected to produce anything that might inspire others so delighted to hear you like the layout and that it reminds you of the region. I have to say - Calais to Sicily by rail and back again, what a journey! I am hoping to do the Milan-Sicily sleeper/train ferry post CV19 - and I have contemplated bolting the Paris-Milan Thello on top, although I think we will probably just fly into Milan. Bordighera is very pleasant, I've visited a few times. I love your layout concept - a fictional principality on the Ventimiglia 'avoiding line' sounds like it would fuse all the highlights of the Ligurian coast! There's lots of good models of FS prototypes in H0 so that's entirely understandable, I've often eyed the choice enviously but as Italian N seems to be coming good I'm ploughing on with it!

Big Lockdown Liguria news - I've finally managed to track down four additional XMPR Eurofima carriages to take my rake out to seven in total and I'm absolutely delighted! These have eluded me for some time - my original three are the Pirata Fleischmann commission from 2017 and I've been wanting to add some more ever since, despite XMPR being the dominant livery for the past 25 years almost all other liveries seem easier to find! And here they are, gloriously in motion!

Always good to sign up the next generation! I recommend it - for family holidays we would fly into Nice and then take the train from Nice Ville, changing at Ventimigilia, to somewhere in Western Ligurian - usually, but not always, Sanremo. Pictures above are from more recent revisits!

@Tartaruga Jus checked out Ventimiglia as I actually did want to model Ventimiglia and got as far as kit bashing the roundhouse and completing some baseboards before I realised that I'd overreached given then current skills/time/spare cash... Still fancy it though, especially given the mingling of SNCF/FS stock and the other express services - this is May 2015 and the daytime Thello has arrived at Ventimiglia hauled by an E444R on the left and another E444R approaches on the right - a Caimano is in the far distance (I've chosen the wrong end of the platform!): Another E444R lurks elsewhere:

All these helpful posts chipping away at my excuses! Thanks a lot @5944 - sounds like a nice accumulated stash, what is the layout that you are planning? I've actually just poached a Del Prado 'Navetta' E424 to have a go at motorising - I've got a DCC equipped Fleischmann chassis that I hope the bodyshell will fit on and will run better than the exuberant Kato DC chassis I've got the E402 on. Thanks too for the link to the FS Foundation (very useful) and the heads up on the Facebook group - I've 'applied' to join too. If he is willing to post to the UK then I'd be happy to share an order if that made sense for both of us.

@Tartaruga thank you very much! Its definitely possible to get a result, no doubt better results could be achieved by a more skilled individual than me! Tempted by a second attempt on the XMPR D345... Either would be spectacular! I admire the ambition. If I'm honest, I'd love to do a bigger scene with some urban features but the lack of Italian buildings or kits in N means a lot of scratchbuilding (that I know would bog down me at least to a crawl).

I'm probably not going to win any engineering in miniature awards for this but introducing my new motive power, an E402b! This is of course a motorised Del Prado 'Locomotives of The World' bodyshell, procured from eBay and sitting atop a generic Kato chassis, I've added a coupler pocket to the rear underneath the bodyshell. The bogie pivots are heroically off centre (see below).... But it runs and it was about £20 all in! Evidence of actual running:

Thanks @Stan68 and agreed, how about this for a prototype shorter rake (looking the other way at Cervo from your original post): https://issuu.com/europeanrailtimetable/docs/12samplepages_sum2017_website

@Stan68 sounds fantastic - we did Paris-Milan on the Thello in 2017 (albeit a different route by then). I thought the Thello coaches only exist in H0 (but happy to be wrong!). We arrived in Milano Centrale at 7am behind this E402b: Said Thello carriages behind:

I've got around to creating a YouTube channel so I can share some of the videos off my phone - here is the E483 with the XMPR stock heading West. You can see that the tunnel portal doesn't quite hide the sharp transition to a 9in curve (learning point) and the ground palm has since been replanted elsewhere (because... I didn't like it there!) but hopefully this gives a better overall flavour of the scene than pictures alone