TrentValleyRailway

You are indeed correct and I may even in future have a single line branch to ‘something’ maybe depot or branch terminus for the 4-car emu /voyagers , yet to be decided on the opposite side of the garage, I also gave space on the very lower level once tidied to also do another scene in the future if I decided to. I also concur baseboard and engineering, track and operations is much more my expertise than the scenery aspects. Happy to have inspired your future layout thoughts. thanks,

1. if I ever get round to doing any weathering, and doing it good I’d be amazed! Think I might pen weather the outer rails so they are less shiny as a minimum. 2. a combination of both is in progress, for the container depot lines it was easier to create what is in effect a ballast pit . For the mainlines I will ballast before adding the grass , turf areas 3. I have quite a solid foundation of cork thickness to mitigate the murmur of noise but yes ballast outside of the cork area to have a ballast shoulder. thanks for keeping in touch.

How a scene can change quite quickly, more progress below

Been building up the landscape around tunnel portals

The start of scenery for the mainline

yes 3mm plywood sheets, comes pre-sticky adhesive sheets, maybe could do with a small dab of backscene glue in case of peeling around the edges (hasn't happened as yet).

the join has been laid left to right away from the camera - although very difficult to spot somewhere above the dhl containers, scene at a right angle at the back is a separate sheet merged in the corner . kind observations. thanks,

before and after for the work on the backscene

Latest layout update now available

going for large scale slab effect which is about the length of a container, effect is provided by laying the plasticard sheets ‘portrait’ next to each other with the shorter sides against each other

pictures of progress on hard standing concrete

All the latest work summed up in this months layout update

Moving on now with scenery area around container depot, been laying more cork sheets and plasticard to bring the surrounding area up to the level of the container rails - eventually creating flat hard standing area for containers, reach stackers and lorries

Hi Ian, great question - the answer being when I did a 3-way point and another point on the fiddle yard the ‘long wire’ for the frog snapped off the underside of the rail and I’d rather be sure for reliability that the frog is always powered that i solder directly to the underside of the frog - also on the scenic section I wanted the wire to go vertically down through a hole under the point out of sight. A little more Effort but Nearer and works well for me