Couldn't resist!

Today, I spent an hour tinkering and answering the door to kids wrapped in bandages or draped in bed sheets. I started off by painting the plywood black, then did some scenic work. Instead of explaining it all... here’s a picture.

I’ve included;
a) Ballast
b) Pit ‘supports’
c) Slate ‘surround’ for the pit.
d) A water tower (still under construction)

Some weathering still needs to be done; this will be done over the next few days.

Update

Today was a very productive day, on many fronts (after trying to figure out what time it was). I first spent two hours doing a ‘foreigner’ for another layout. There is a Model Railway group (not formally a club) in Blaenau Ffestiniog. They have a 00 gauge layout which is about 15ft x 10ft and it includes two mainlines, a branch line, two testing loops, a village, industrial ar
ea, main station and a yard. The layout has many functioning lights on it (which looks great in the dark) but the loco sheds needed some floodlights.
Another member had found some Eckon floodlights and colour light signals in a bag at the Chester swap meet, which he bought for the layout. They needed to be re-wired and touched up, so I said I’d have a go. Some of the maintenance ladders had fallen off and one platform was missing. These where re-attached and a platform made.
Then I turned my attention to Traeth Mawr.
I had been looking at the track plan for the Boston lodge board, and wasn’t happy with how close the carriage shed needed to be to the mainline, so I started by pulling up the track pins to move the shed away slightly. After temporary holding the track down and looking at it, it didn’t look rite, so I went back to the original plan for that area, a locomotive shed and ashing out pit. The idea then developed into having two pits, one similar to Boston Lodge’s ‘long shed’ pit and the ashing out pit.
The area of the pit was marked out, and holed drilled in each corner, the holes was then cut out using a jigsaw. A piece of 5mm plywood was then screwed underneath the holes
Track was then laid over, sleepers removed, copper clad sleepers added to prevent the track from bowing when a locomotive was overhead.
All in all a very productive day over the next week the wiring can be finished.

Good news, bad news and some developing thoughts

Let’s start at the beginning, if needed to change the oil in my car, (read on, railway stuff will follow) and since North Wales isn't known for its gloriously sunny days, I decided to do it in the garage in the dry and relative ease. So the layout was moved to a corner. Yesterday I went into the garage just to remind myself on things that need doing to the layout and I’m glad that I did. On the corner of one of the station boards had some mould on it. The good news is that it has only affected the one corner.
Hopefully, some new windows, painting, sealing etc (and possibly insulating) will result in a nice (and safe) place to put up the layout. I was thinking about what I was going to do about the back-board(the board with the 'sky' on it at the back), after looking at quite a few layout, I noticed that some have ones a few inches high, some had ones two foot high, but others had none.
This got me thinking, backboard or no backboard? I was thinking of a backboard about 5-6 inches high, just to 'protect' the layout. But then saw this picture. It's one of (in my opinion) best 009 layouts on the exhibition circuit, County Gate. I thought the layout looked good with the photographs printed on the backboard, but in my opinion (no offence to John de Frayssinet, whose modelling skills are outstanding) the layout looks much better without a backboard at the rear. I know it is needed to hide the fiddle yard at the back of County Gate, but my fiddle yard isn't at the rear, so it's ideal for me.