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More train car abuse. It still looked too nice. I decided to hit it with a Bic lighter which made the paint bubble. Now it is getting more to what I want it to look like.

The end of the helix has been reached, you can already see the widening of the route for the station entrance.

My experiment went a little bit off track.   This is actually two experiments in one shot. The car weathering and a piece of set track disguised as hand laid track with glue on wood sleepers. 

Getting more loco's out brings with it the realisation of just how much work there is still to do but with a hobby that's currently taken up in excess of 11 years of my life in garden railways alone, looking on the bright side it means I've got plenty of things to keep me occupied for many more years to come. Yesterday evening I took a look over my class 60's in an effort to decide which ones to concentrate on next. It appears they are all equipped with 8-pin decoder sockets so I'm not able to swap things around with any that are currently on the layout so with regards to sound installations it means more expense. I had considered the possibility of adding TTS sound as a means of saving money but I'm not impressed with the one I installed in 60087 'CLIC Sargent' a few months ago. In my opinion I prefer the factory fitted sound from back in 2009! Here's 60087 pictured yesterday evening on the layout awaiting a time when I can add the bogie log wagons behind it that we regularly see passing over Ribblehead. It's not really in keeping with the era that Skew Bridge is supposed to vaguely represent but it's just one of those trains that holds special memories. Also posed on the layout last night were the following two loco's beginning with coal sector liveried 60090 'Quinag'...... ...and Transrail liveried 60066 'John Logie Baird' I didn't photograph any more and haven't specifically earmarked the above two for attention next. I'll consider what liveries I've got and try to go with something different from what's already on the layout. Thinking about it I don't suppose things have changed a great deal since I began with my first garden layout back in 2009. The level of detailing on certain more recent models has increased and there's been a small increase in the standard of DCC sound installations but other than that most of the models I purchased all those years ago can still pretty much hold their own alongside models of today which, after a decade or more in boxes, is something of a relief.

My Hornby class 60, 60048, has been operating on Skew Bridge for a few months now and first featured on the old Selby Garden Railway back in September 2009 but today, after only 11 years, I've finally managed to add the bufferbeam deflector and air brake pipework! Here's 60048 alongside sister loco 60007 - both of which could really do with driver figures adding to the cabs. I'm setting up the majority of my loco's with detailing at one end and a standard Kadee coupler on the rear meaning they can only be used in one direction. 60048 and 60007 are just part of my collection of class 60 locomotives and hopefully over the coming weeks and months I will be able to bring more of them into use. I just wish that Hornby had used the same chassis throughout their class 60 models and not produced some with 21-pin and others with 8-pin decoder sockets. It would have made swapping things around much easier. To Hornby's credit, they have produced a very fine model which even after more than a decade in the case of 60048 still performs perfectly straight from the box. If only they could have made a decent coupling arrangement for each end of it.

I've run out of large pieces of seafoam so I'm unable to make any more trees right now but I've been left with a lot of smaller pieces and trimmings that I've been able to form together into small bush like shapes that, when covered with some fine scatter material, really do look the part. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to shake off all the tiny seeds that are invariably attached to the Seafoam pieces but when left on they resemble tiny fruits so I'm happy to leave them as they are unless I learn differently. The trouble is that these latest examples are in many ways superior to my initial attempts at creating bushes but I can always replace them over time. I've also made a little more progress, or perhaps I should say I've had a slight change of heart, in locating my signals. I had initially sited the down loop signal, which is the central one in the photo above, about 2-3 feet further back from the one on the main line because I didn't want them all standing in a row. However, with double-headed loco's and a rake of MGR wagons it didn't leave me with a great deal of room to clear the points at the rear and while I could have worked with it, it just didn't look right. So here we are and this is how they'll have to remain. I just need a shunt signal to accompany the 3-aspect from the sidings so that I can legally shunt towards the buffers. The mainline signals are still working perfectly while the others are at this time awaiting final installation.

Hi John, many thanks , welcome to the forum  yes my build ia a module set up , have on the form a few layout from down under gave up because the extreme weather conditions destroying all their hard work . I decided to go module for taking long to build, we get 43 degree days in summer can bend the track rails. My modules are constructed well where they don't warp, as for the curved section not have any frames but a leg is every 3 and a half inches apart. The state I live in is in election mode, voting day on the 31st of October, but there is pre-poll two weeks before starting today, no progress on the layout till after the election. Tony from down under keeping on moving ahead