Hudson's Pizza

So the time has finally come to unveil the plan for my next layout. Given that I'm still not happy with the track plan for 77 Box Lane that will stay on the drawing board for now, and this is an entirely new and different layout.

One of the things I liked about my N gauge layout, Jerusalem (which is now boxed up and being stored in the loft) was that it had a roundy-roundy track plan so I could just watch the trains go by. It was also useful for running in and testing new locomotives as they could be left going for hours if necessary without any intervention. Given the size I had to play with 77 Box Lane was always going to be an end-to-end layout and while I'm happy with that (although not the current track plan) I did feel it would be useful to have some form of continuous run test track, even if that was a simple circle of temporary track.

I wasn't actively planning a new layout when a random comment sent me off on a bit of historical research. I grew up in Morley, a small town just outside Leeds, and I've known for a long time (pretty much as long as I can remember) that many of the early builders of locomotives and rolling stock were based in and around Leeds; it's one of the reasons I have a soft spot for the Quarry Hunslet locomotives. What I didn't know, until recently, was that I actually grew up less than three miles from the main works of one of the companies.

Robert Hudson Ltd was founded in 1865 and had it's main works at Gildersome a small village just outside Morley (it's officially been part of Morley since 1937). This was a huge site covering 38 acres and was well served by a 2 foot tramway. Raw materials and finished products arrived and left the site via the standard gauge branch line that formed the northern edge of the site. You can see these and many other details on both the 1938 map and a 1928 aerial photograph.

What immediately caught my eye though was the circular feature which is very clear on the map, but unfortunately is unlabelled as to purpose. Zooming in on the photo though and it's purpose becomes clearer. It's a circular test track on which you can see what looks like a couple of wagons.

To me this looks perfect for turning into a pizza layout. It will give me somewhere to test and run in locomotives and wagons while being based on an actual location. There also appears to be a variety of building styles to perfect and some dry stone walling. I know that so far I've not built any Hudson wagons or locomotives which they re-sold (they didn't build their own but rather re-sold those produced by companies such as Hudswell Clarke, Kerr Stuart, and Hunslet) but I can always apply Rule 1 of railway modelling; it's my trainset so I'll run whatever I want to!

The problem I have is that this grainy photo contains the only details I have on the buildings surrounding the test track. There is a drawing in Alan J. Haigh's book on the foundry (published by the Moseley Railway Trust) but it doesn't provide any extra details. So does anyone know of any further drawings or photos of that area of the works that might show more details of the buildings. If you do please leave a comment.

From some rough measurements, I believe that I can fit the circle of track and the buildings immediately surrounding it onto a board that will fit into the box I originally bought for Jerusalem but which was about 1cm too small. So this means it will fit on my desk and I'll have storage for it. The next step will be a full scale mockup (starting from the map) to check everything will fit and then I can make a start on the baseboard and then building some track. This should be fun!

77 Box Lane

It's been around three and a half months since I blogged about starting a new layout based on what would fit in a storage box I'd bought. In that time I've built two locomotives and a open coach for the layout as well as experimented with building a stone wall and producing a cobbled surface but, at least here on this blog, there has been no sign of me producing a track plan for the layout. I obviously need the track plan before I can make a start on the layout, and I have been thinking about it on and off since the box arrived, but it turned out to be more difficult than I expected to come up with something I was happy with.

One of the problems I had with Jerusalem was painting the track around the point on the scenic section while making sure to maintain the electrical connection (i.e. not getting paint on the wrong part of the blades). Unfortunately it can still be a little temperamental, although that also might be the manual point lever not working as smoothly as I'd like. Either way when I set about designing this new layout my initial approach was to avoid having any points on the scenic section at all.

As you can see the idea was to have a street scene with the railway simply passing through the factory yard. Assuming the layout was at a sensible height then the trains would be completely hidden at both ends of the layout behind the cottages and so these areas would act as the fiddle yards. With the four sidings I could in theory have three trains on the layout at the same time allowing me some variation. My main concern about this plan was that I thought it would be very dark, as there would be no green countryside to offset the buildings, which led me to the second idea.

As you can see the solution to the problem was to view the street from the back, so have countryside running up to the rear wall of the factory and use some half-relief terrace houses to hide the fiddle yards. While I was happier with this idea, I was slowly beginning to realise that such a layout was going to be fairly boring to operate (although potentially easy to automate) and that I'd need to have a more complex track plan, and points on the scenic section, if I wasn't going to quickly tire of the layout once it was built. The problem was that I couldn't see how I could sensibly fit more track into a purely yard based railway; I did try a few ideas but none of them are worth showing you.

As you can see from this third plan I finally hit on the idea of having the railway supply the factory which allows me a simple line through a factory yard as well as the line running off into the countryside. With the added countryside section, I've been able to reduce the yard area which should give me a nice view reminiscent of the original inspiration, and I can now hide the main fiddle yard inside the factory building and access it from a hole in the rear wall. The cottages at the other end should also hide the train so it can sit there for a while as if it has disappeared off somewhere else. That brown line will either be a wall or a fence to separate the line from the road, which might even give me a chance to try out the fence posts I designed for Penistone Railway Works before I switched to N gauge. I'm also thinking of raising the green area at the back of the layout into a small slope or crag which again will give me places to stick electronics etc, given that I don't have any space under the board to keep the height down so it will fit in the box. If I get this right then the railway shouldn't look as if it is running into the factory but off somewhere else, giving the idea of a longer line, although all of this will mean I need to add to the backstory.

What this layout has allowed me to do though is to finally pin down the name. If you remember the storage box has a volume of 77 litres and as the factory appears to be at the end of the lane it would have a reasonably high number, so we get 77 Box Lane. That may be slightly cheesy but it works for me.

Now I'm no artist (if you want sketches of layout planning then you need to head over to Iain's blog instead, this post for instance) so I'm afraid you'll have to use your imagination to get a feel of how the layout will look, but can anyone see any obvious problems or suggest any improvements that they would make if they were building this layout?

And We're Off

Work, albeit minor, has now started on the new layout, although as yet there isn't exactly much to see. Now as well as a box to store the layout in (the trays have now arrived as well), I have the baseboard on which everything else will be built. As with Jerusalem I've gone for a simple piece of MDF as the baseboard; this time 9mm MDF rather than 12mm based solely on what the local DIY store had in stock. To ensure that I can get the layout out of the box, the final baseboard size measures 110cm by 22cm giving a maximum model, at 4mm to the foot, of 275 foot by 55 foot. Also, given the depth of the box, minus the MDF and storage trays I have 22cm I can build above the baseboard (so 55 foot of model space), which should be enough, although it certainly means that any point control etc. will have to be on top of the baseboard as I won't be mounting anything under it.

I've also had my order for the Dorothea kit from Brian Madge confirmed so that is at least one piece of rolling stock confirmed for the layout (assuming I manage to put it together correctly). Given that there isn't much to show I thought I'd illustrate this post with one of the slides my Dad took while I was growing up, which shows a Quarry Hunslet locomotive which isn't that different from Dorothea. The photo shows Elidir, built in 1899 for the Dinorwic Quarry and original named Enid, at the Llanberis Lake Railway on the 6th of August 1985.

Jack-In-The-Box

In my previous post I gave you some idea of the theme of my next layout; a 4mm to the foot model (OO9 gauge) of a narrow gauge industrial railway. I also showed you two kits I'd like to build to provide locomotives for the layout and given that one of these was for a Quarry Hunslet you could be forgiven for assuming I was going to go for the classic Welsh slate industry layout. You would, however, have been wrong.

The Quarry Hunslet classes of locomotives got their name because they were built by the Hunslet Engine Company and could usually be found working in a quarry, often a Welsh slate quarry. While there is nothing wrong with modelling a Welsh slate quarry I decided I'd go for something closer to home and look for some form of Yorkshire industrial setting given that the engines were all built in Leeds.

I'm not sure if there is a sensible prototype from the late 19th century, but there is a modern prototype I'm going to use for inspiration. The Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills, which is only 2.5 miles from where the Hunslet Engine Company used to be, includes a narrow gauge railway on which a Quarry Hunslet called Jack runs. It's been a long time since I've been to the museum but fortunately Reinhold Behringer has been more recently and posted this excellent photo on Flickr.

Unfortunately the narrow gauge line was only ever built to exhibit the museums locomotives and wasn't present when the mill was a working woollen mill. As such the track plan isn't particularly interesting, as you can see from this plan I've put together from some 1990 Ordinance Survey maps and a satellite image from Google Maps.

I've had a look at other works where I know there used to be old railway tracks but so far the lines don't seem to show up on the old OS maps so I'm struggling to find a nice example track plan. Mind you given the space constraints (remember the complete layout can be no larger than 1135mm by 232mm) a single line through some mill buildings may be enough. Given the problems I had deciding on the track plan for Jerusalem I know it's worth taking my time to get it right, and that sometimes less is more, so I'll keep thinking about the track plan while I start building the rolling stock.

I mentioned in the previous post that the layout could support different time periods based on the locomotives and other detailing items; I'm currently thinking that there are at least three obvious periods I can model; two with the mill in use (one steam and one diesel) and then a modern day museum setting (just like Armley Mills) where I can run anything I want. I think this should give me lots of flexibility and allow me to build almost anything I want to.

One other thing I need though is a name for the layout, and here I'm hoping for some help. My current thoughts are around doing something related to the fact that it is being built to fit a specific box. So my ideas so far revolve around things like like "77 Box Lane" or "Box Street Mill". Any ideas are more than welcome.

A New Scale for a New Layout

Before I go any further let me clear up a possible confusion from my last post. Jerusalem is "gathering dust" as it is uncovered, not because it isn't being used or enjoyed. I was just making the point that I should probably have thought about how I was going to look after the layout long term, before I started building it rather than afterwards, and that I wasn't going to make that mistake again. So having cleared that up let's move on to a bit of planning for my next layout.

If you've followed this blog for a while then you will know that Jerusalem was an N gauge (2mm to the foot) model of a standard gauge railway running through a mostly rural scene. For my next layout I'm intending to go for the exact opposite; an OO9 gauge (4mm to the foot) model of a narrow gauge industrial railway. Firstly while N gauge gives me more railway in a small space, I do find the 2mm to the foot scale very small compared to the modelling I did in OO gauge at 4mm to the foot (for example the 3D printed wagons I designed). Having now built a continuous run model, where I can sit and watch the trains go by, I'm happier with the idea of a more interactive railway, and so the end-to-end nature that going up a scale will necessitate doesn't worry me as much as it did before. Having said that the dimensions of the layout, dictated by its storage box, are just 1135mm by 232mm (or a little less to make sure it fits). At 4mm to the foot this allows me to model, at the most, 283 feet by 58 feet which isn't actually very much. Given the space constraints narrow gauge seems a good idea as the track will still be just 9mm wide (the same as in N gauge) and will require less clearance and allow tighter curves than modelling a standard gauge line. The choice to model an industrial railway is simply that I fancy doing more building construction rather than focusing on the landscape as I did with Jerusalem. Of course describing the layout as being a narrow gauge industrial railway still doesn't give you any idea of what I'm planning.

One thing about modelling in OO9 is that I'll need to build most of the rolling stock, including the locomotives, as there is currently very little available ready-to-run and there are been a couple of locomotives I really fancy building.

Firstly we have a Quarry Hunslet locomotive from a kit by Brian Madge (although I'm having problems contacting Brian to order one). I've always liked the look of these narrow gauge locomotives and the kit looks like something I should be able to handle; the chassis comes part assembled and the whole kit can apparently be assembled with super-glue if I don't feel up to soldering it together.

As most of you know I definitely prefer my locomotives to be steam powered, but I've been fascinated by the Narrow Planet kit for this small Baguley-Drewry locomotive since it was still in the design stage. The main body shell is 3D printed and then augmented with etched metal parts and was being designed at the same time as I was designing my first 3D printed wagons. Again it uses a pre-built chassis so should be within my capabilities to build. My thinking is that with these two locomotives I could run the layout in a number of guises covering a number of time periods, which would extend the interest both for me building it and for anyone who gets to see or operate it.

So that's the locomotive power sorted (when I actually manage to order the kits), in the next post I'll give you more details on the setting for the railway and some possible track plans.

TB Or Not TB?

I've never been lucky enough to see a badger, and if the current government has its way, the chance of me ever seeing one will be very low, so I'll have to make do with the next best thing; a badger roaming free in Jerusalem.

The badger is from the same Langley Models pack (A64) as the squirrel I added to Jerusalem back in September. In contrast to the squirrel I couldn't get away with painting the badger in a single colour although I did start with the same grey primer.

Because I'm modelling in N gauge (2mm to the foot) this badger really is tiny and I had to use the smallest paintbrush I own along with tiny amounts of paint, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. It looks much better in real life and will be a nice addition to the layout once I've figured out where I want him to sit.

Maybe It's A Woollen Mill?

I'm still to decide exactly what business S. A. Tan and Sons are in, but maybe they are running a woollen mill?

I didn't want to fill the layout with sheep, so I've used just three from the pack of eight I bought from Langley Models (model number A70). For those that are interested (and to make sure I can remember) they were painted by first spraying with Humbrol grey primer before the face and shadow detail was painted black (Tamiya flat black). The wool was then dry brushed using first white (Tamiya) and then Ivory (Model Color).

If you look closely you might also be able to spot the squirrel.

The 13:05 To Jerusalem

Today’s post was going to be all about sheep, but just before 1pm the post arrived with my repaired locomotive, so I can finally show you a working passenger train.

I thought I'd go for a video rather than a photo and while the train is probably moving a bit to fast and the video quality is poor you should still get the general idea.

We Are Sorry To Announce.....

British Railways are sorry to announce that the introduction of a passenger service through Jerusalem, as well as all goods services, will be delayed for an unknown period due to a failed locomotive.

As some of you will know I've recently had a birthday, and many of the presents were train related and will probably turn up on this blog at some point. One of those presents was a Mk 1 57ft suburban brake (Graham Farish model 374-312A) which, for the first time, would have brought a passenger service to Jerusalem. Unfortunately the failure of my only locomotive has brought a halt to "playing trains" for a while -- modelling will continue though.

The locomotive failed almost five months to the day after I bought it and so fortunately it is still under warranty. It has run perfectly, in both directions, since it arrived, at least until Friday last week. The first sign that there was anything wrong was when I tried running it in reverse; it had a pronounced wobble and was making a weird clicking noise. Strangely it ran forward without any issues what so ever. From a quick examination, it appeared that as the wheels rotated the rod connected the middle wheel and valve gear wasn't moving properly as the vertical piece it is connected to wasn't moving at all (it should swing left and right). I was going to see if running it forward for a few minutes would help it settle, but it hadn't moved more than about six inches when the connecting rod popped off (as you can see in the photo). Given that I have no idea what the underlying problem was or how to repair the obvious problem properly it has now been boxed up and sent off for repair under warranty. Hopefully it will return soon.

The coach is, however, excellent and I really am looking forward to being able to run it properly; I've been slightly lucky in that I didn't have anything anywhere near as long as the coach to check clearances when building the landscape and it only just clears the tunnel mouth... but just is enough. I will, however, definitely be more careful with clearances on future layouts, although if I can avoid such tight 1st radius curves in future then the problem will (at least partially) disappear.

Glazed

As you can see, other than some weathering, the articulated flatbed truck I started to build from a Langley Models kit a few posts ago is now complete. The final step was to glaze the windows.

Given the small size of the windows, and the relative thickness of the castings, it was obvious that sticking some clear plastic inside the cab wouldn't work at all. One alternative would have been to try and cut some plastic to fit flush inside the frames but that also didn't seem like a sensible route. Fortunately there is a much easier alternative; Micro Kristal Klear.

Microscale Industries' Micro Kristal Klear (I bought mine from Eileen's Emporium) is a PVA like glue that is designed to both dry clear and to not discolour clear plastic. This makes it perfect for gluing windows in place, but it can also be used to make the windows. You simply use a cocktail stick to smear a small amount around the edge of the window frame, and then draw the glue across the opening to make a thin film. You can see this in action above, after I'd just done the first window. Once dry the glue is clear and the window is glazed.

Scottish Crates

Having built a loading dock alongside the factory siding I need something to load. Fortunately I'd already sourced something appropriate on my trip to Edinburgh.

When I arrived in Edinburgh I had the afternoon to kill, so rather than heading straight to my hotel I took a slight detour to visit Harburn Hobbies. My reason for visiting the shop was to see their Harburn Hamlet range of N gauge accessories, and after careful consideration I came away with a stack of wooden crates (item number HN 606).

While the stack looks quite good placed on the loading dock, it is also perfectly sized to fit within the open goods wagons meaning I can move it around the layout if I want to. Now of course I need to populate the layout with workers to make the scene more realistic.

My Eye View

I've now added some scenery to all of Jerusalem (I haven't necessarily finished doing this but it now looks a lot more natural) and while I'll probably go into the details in later posts I thought I'd show you roughly what I see when I sit back and enjoy the view from my study chair.

This isn't a perfect copy of my view due to the lens on the camera curving the image somewhat (also it is slightly overexposed so the grass is darker), but it should give you a fairly good idea of what I'm currently looking at.

Nephelococcygia

Now I know that when it comes to seeing shapes in clouds (which is apparently called Nephelococcygia) not everyone always sees the same thing. So does anyone else see Max von Sydow's excellent portrayal of Ming the Merciless from the 1980 film version of Flash Gordon (the one with the excellent Queen soundtrack) in this bit of sky from the temporary clouds on Jerusalem?

Personally I can see the eyebrows, moustache, beard and the cowl around the back of his head. Can anyone else see this or am I just going insane?

Drive Safely

Not a train, or railway, in sight in today's post. What you are looking at is the road leading away from the factory which bends to the right over the railway and out of Jerusalem. As you can see I've done some more scenic work, specifically hiding the end of the drystone wall and grassing the slope to the left of the road. The main new item is the speed limit sign. Unlike the "Beware of the Trains" sign, I bought this one which is from a set of pre-1960's road signs made by Ancorton Models.

Health And Safety: The Missing Details

The previous post was meant to be more than just a single photo, there was meant to be some textual content as well; specifically details on how I made the "Beware Of The Trains" sign. Unfortunately I managed to press Publish instead of Preview! So here are the details behind the making of the sign.

While I'm sure I could have bought a Beware of the Trains sign I decided that it was simple enough for me to have a go at making my own; after all it's only two colours, how hard can it be. The major problem is the size of the sign. The sign is approximately 3.5mm wide by 2.5mm tall. This means that the large letters are written in a 2.4pt font! Given that 10pt font is considered small you should be able to get a good idea just how small the letters are. If not then these photos should help.

The first photo really gives a good sense of the scale of the sign, it also shows that laser printed ink actually rubs off quite quickly! To stop this happening I painted on a thin layer of Humbrol enamel satin varnish before I tried handling the printed area. The printed and varnished paper was then stuck to some thin black cardboard (it's probably around 200gsm) and then carefully cut out using a sharp knife.

I made the post from some 0.6mm wire (the same stuff I used on the trees). I cut a piece about 1.4cm long to give me a 5 foot post (at 2mm to the foot that is 1cm) plus 4mm to go into the layout surface. I held the wire in a pin vice while I painted it with Tamiya flat black. Once the paint was dry, I used a cocktail stick to put a tiny drop of superglue on the back of the sign and then glued it to the post. Once the glue had set I gave the whole thing another thin coat of satin varnish. The final step was to drill a small hole (0.65mm drill bit) into the layout and slide the post in.

If you fancy making your own sign then feel free to re-use the SVG file I created (I've included both a white on black and a black on white sign). I did try converting the SVG to a more common format (like a PNG or a PDF) but in everycase the converted file lost too much detail making the small letters unreadable. I'd suggest opening the file with Inkscape and printing at the highest quality setting your printer can manage.

Health And Safety

From Roots To Branches

Given that I'm not modelling a windswept Hebridean island (although there is at least one person who does) Jerusalem is going to need some trees. Now I've never been a fan of ready to plant trees. They are either conifers modelled as perfect cones or deciduous trees that look more like a green ball on a stick. Even the kits for building trees don't really inspire me; the trunk looks very plasticy and the resulting tree is still very regular looking. What I wanted was some straggly looking trees that were all different but similar.

I've recently been reading through John de Frayssinet's excellent Sceneic Modelling book in which he suggests using sagebrush to create very natural looking trees. Now firstly I don't have any sagebrush plants and secondly John models in 4mm to the foot, and so his trees would be a little big for Jerusalem. It did, however, get me thinking that maybe there was something in the garden that would work.

As this year we have had a reasonable summer we have done quite a bit of work in the garden. This has included removing a number of shrubs that had gone berserk at the back of the garden. I'm not entirely sure what the shrub is but it spreads by putting out underground runners and these runners, cut into bits, looked fairly tree like to my eyes. As the roots went into the recycling bin I cut off the bits that looked promising and left them to dry out. Once dry they were microwaved for about 30 seconds to make sure they (and anything on them) were very dead.

So, yesterday, armed with some dead roots, I set about making some trees. This is essentially a simple four step process, which you can probably figure out from these handy step by step illustrations.

Firstly you need to find the appropriate bits of root. Each root then has a pin inserted into its base to allow it to be easily added to the layout; I used some 0.6mm wire that I had laying around and drilled a 0.65mm hole in each root. The wire was fixed with a small dab of superglue and left to dry. Once the roots were ready I added them to a temporary base (just a push fit into a hole, no glue). The tops of the trees were then sprayed with a matt varnish (specifically Winsor & Newton Artists' Matt Varnish). This makes them very sticky at which point I rolled the tree in Woodland Scenics Medium Green Course Turf. I then allowed the varnish to dry before repeating the process at least once to add more body to the foliage. When I was happy with the tree I then sprayed it with varnish again and sprinkled over some Woodland Scenics Green Blend Blended Turf to add a little colour variation. If you ignore drying time each tree probably took less than five minutes to make.

Once the trees are fully dry I then touch up any areas of the trunk where the bark has rubbed off with small dabs of RailMatch acrylic Sleeper Grime which seems to match the trunk colour quite well. A small hole (0.65mm again) is then drilled in the layout and the tree carefully positioned. I'll probably glue the trees in eventually but for now they are just a push fit so that I can remove them to work on the grass underneath and around them. So here is another shot of the front right corner of the layout with the trees in place.

Turfed

If you remember the back story for Jerusalem started with the following mumbo jumbo

It's 1955 and little Johnny has borrowed his Dad's camera for a day of trainspotting. He isn't expecting to see much as the sleepy branch-line near where he lives isn't exactly a hive of activity. Having settled himself on a sunny bank it isn't long before the distinctive sound of a hard working steam engine echos down the valley and within a few minutes the train emerges from under the nearby road bridge and into view. A quick press of the shutter and Johnny captures for posterity the first visit of the newly built 82026 to his sleepy corner of England.

At the time I didn't even have a track plan and certainly not a working layout and so I illustrated the post with a black and white photo of the locomotive and bridge just sat on my desk. Well here is the current state of play which I think is a much better match to the description.

The photo is straight from the camera without any digital messing about, which shows how even with the slightly large clouds everything comes together quite nicely. As you can see so far I've only worked on the area to the right of the road, and even then it is only turf and so looks more like a nicely mown lawn than naturally occurring grass. It will look more natural when I bring out the electrified tea strainer!

In case you are interested all the materials, but one, used to create the grass came from the Woodland Scenics landscape learning kit, but so that I don't forget exactly what was used the full list is:

• Green Blend Blended Turf
• Medium Green Coarse Turf
• Medium Green Clump-Foliage
• Yellow Flowering Foliage (this wasn't in the kit)

High Flying, Adored

One thing I haven't talked about so far on this blog (other than a brief disparaging comment) is how I'm supplying power to the locomotives. I'm currently in possession of five controllers (two of which are the cheap and nasty Hornby starter controller) but I have a clear favourite; the Hammant and Morgan Flyer.

There are a number of reasons I really like this controller:

• It's the controller I remember using with my first train set.
• It's reassuringly well built. You could probably kill someone if you hit them with it!
• It's a centre off controller
• It uses a continuous speed dial
• It isn't a PWM based controller
• The illustration on the box is exceedingly dated!

I'm sure everyone will have their own preferences that may well not match with mine, but I think most would agree that they really don't make controllers like this anymore.

The problem is that PWM based controllers are cheap to build (I did experiment with using my Arduino to controller the locomotive which should give you an idea on cost) and so they dominate the market. The problem is that they tend to make the motors in modern models buzz loudly as they essentially turn it on and off rapidly. It is possible to tune the PWM frequency to reduce the noise but in doing so you lose some of the benefits (low speed control seems to suffers quite badly).

The Flyer, however, is based around a large rheostat that gets satisfyingly hot in use as it dumps a lot of the current as heat. The downside is that you wouldn't want to leave it plugged in unattended... just in case. Also it is quite large in comparison to more modern controllers. Of course, it's my layout and I'll cry if I want to I'll choose which controller is used.

Cloudy, May Brighten Later

I've finally got fed up of looking at the brown backscene and so have temporarily brought in some clouds.

A few months ago I test printed a couple of options for the backscene as photobox were offering exceptionally cheap poster printing. I printed two options on the same poster, the photo in use here is actually from a panorama I took on Skye a few years ago. The second sky I experimented with was courtesy of Adrian. Unfortunately neither of us were happy with how either sky turned out; the clouds on this one are a bit big, but the colouring is slightly better than on Adrian's (not Adrian's fault but due to the low resolution file I printed as we had problems transferring a better copy).

So while these clouds are only temporary I think you'll agree that they brighten the layout considerably, and show that when we do manage to figure out a better photo then the approach of printing as a matt photo poster will give me a good backscene that will complement the rest of the scenery quite well.

You can also see in this photo that I've finished the factory yard, at the third attempt, with the surface being created and painted in the same way as the access road.