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The first half of 2024 I was very busy doing lots of travelling, so I wasn't able to start work on the railway until July! Apart from a small track repair, the last three months I've been constructing my station canopies. Inspired by Lewes station in Sussex, the structure is built from folded aluminium sheet and clad in plastic card. There are still lots more to do and it's very much still "work in progress"!

I can't believe where 2024 has gone! Last year I successfully relayed the top loop with the DCC Concepts track, this involved changing the trackbed alignment to smooth out some curves I didn't like and lining the cuttings in stone and relaying around 10 meters of double track through two tunnels.

Looks good.

I'm at home for a while now so will hopefully get the opportunity to make progress. I think this is going to be a job that gets done in lots of little bits rather than one mammoth session. I do seem to have made a mess in the process but that will be sorted later. I've started the process of adding the aluminium L section walls. First was wire brushing the blocks to clean the surface up, then I cleaned the surface of the L section with some IPA. Squeezed out Gorrila glue along the longest straight length and tried to get the L section to stay in place. I found a few bits where there just wasn't enough glue to fill the pits in the blocks so I had a second go with more glue. Then a slight mismatch of block heights caused an issue, I think some of the bedding sand has washed away in the 4 years since I started. So up came a couple of blocks to get them out of the way until they can be re-laid. With that sorted, I used the blocks I'd taken up to weigh the L section down while the glue is setting (24 hours). The aluminium slightly overhangs the face of the block, I thought that would look better on the viaduct so am trying it here, I think the unseen side is more likely to be in line though. I have a busy week then hoping I get the time to relay the blocks, cut and glue the L-section on the other side and replace the track so I can run a train.

How sad that cheerful, optimistic Tony, always so full of ideas, new projects and revisions to the plans for his dream railway, has now left us. All the regular readers of this forum will share his family's sorrow and will miss his fascinating contributions, and digressions into shipbuilding and other things. The loss to his wife and family will be tremendous. Tony had shared with us an earlier family tragedy which must have been a great blow to him, although his positive and ambitious approach to model railway building may have helped him cope with that. It certainly kept him occupied, and the way he revised his plans to adjust to the recent house move was another sign of his can-do attitude. I shall be very sorry not to see any further contributions ending with that cheery byline: "Tony from down under keep on moving ahead".