C by the Seashore

There's something new to see by the seashore on Philden Coast. And that is the new Auscision Models C Class in the Cootes Industrial Greentrains inspired green and gold livery. And crikey! Isn't she a gorgeous sight to see?

The Auscision C Class model locomotive becomes the 7th and final acquisition for my Philden Coast Railway bookshelf layout. After years of chopping and changing as I progressed from my original Philden layout, to briefly modelling a Victorian prototype, upgrading to DCC sound and finally migrating back to the NSW North Coast, it seems that change has finally ceased.

My Coast layout's locomotive roster now consists solely of sound equipped DCC Auscision Models locomotives circa 2000 to 2010. Once again, Auscision's quality is hard to fault, and their model of C509 is superb. Taking it straight out of the box, I programmed it's short address to 9 and put it through its paces without any hesitation. Here's some pictures of it arriving in Philden Harbour Yard, starting with Rusty popping his head out of the goods shed to lean on his broom and take in the sight of the first C to appear by the seashore.

Rusty taking in the sight of C509 in Philden Harbour Yard.

Does anyone else have a locomotive driver with a mullet in their cab?

The no. 2 end of C509 featuring the extended hood as rebuilt in the mid 2000's.

The reasons for my choice of C509 in the Cootes green are simple; 1), I like the colour! 2), I photographed C509 on an SSR grain train in Moree back in 2018, and 3), it fits my everything old is new again approach to modelling, in that it is another diesel dinosaur surviving into the new Millenium dressed in some pretty cool colours.

Newly arrived C509 in the service tracks, while a newly aquired Breeze container can be seen in the no. 4 siding alongside the Brandon Industries warehouse.

The C is a big locomotive, measuring just under 24 cm over the couplers.

Up until the great layout revamp of January 2023, I had originally planned to get the National Rail C Class to fit into my previous inner-Melbourne yard. However, the Cootes' C slots in right alongside my Pacific National NR and BL Class pairing, as it ran like this within NSW, hired out to both Pacific National, SSR and other private operators of the time, making it perfectly plausible to say that it was a regular on Philden Coast traffic alongside a leased CFCLA ex-NSW 422 Class.

C509 became the final model locomotive for my new layout's hitlist. For a small 3.3 metre long bookshelf layout, I now feel that I don't need to add anything else. Even as my wife stood beside me to admire it, she commented on how nice my collection looked, and perhaps reminded me a little that all my days of 'selling this to afford that' were now behind me. The C is that good, that I don't think buying anything else is going to top the feeling of saying that my roster is now complete.

The C Class arrival actually feels like the beginning of the end to my Australian model railway journey. During the course of building 3 Australian HO scale layouts over the past 9 years, I've seen my share of models that I've liked and some that I haven't, but I can honestly say that every model I have on this layout I love. From this point on, I only have the staging yard to convert into a scenic addition to my Harbour Yard, not a list of pre-orders or hard-to-find models to track down. It's actually a real nice feeling!

The face on the ex-Victorian C Class dwarfs that of the ex-NSW 422 Class loco. It's now hard to know which locomotive is my favourite. My wife claims that I say every locomotive is my favourite!

With my latest book Model Railway Backdrop Basics now being promoted and available in stores, this week I will complete the next book that I have been busy working on for the past year, Model Railway Weathered Wonders. Beyond that, in the coming month I will sit down to start writing my final Philden Model Railway Presents book, the title of which is still to be decided. It will likely be an extended book to cover indepth everything that I've shared about changing this layout into its current setting, and likely cover subjects that I haven't brushed on in any of my other books such as; track planning, assembling a roster, operations, starting over and even a bit of model railway psychology. I know that once I start writing this book that my Australian model railway journey will come to an end, and I'll have a layout that I can be proud of. I now want to simply stand back and enjoy operating Philden Coast for years to come.

And heading north out of Harbour Yard beneath the Philden Street overpass.

So... finally, the C Class trots off into staging to get to work shunting some newly arrived van traffic ex-Sydney. These will be positioned in the no. 1 and no. 4 sidings at Brandon Industries, and the loaded refrigerated containers of fresh seafood will be swapped back into place in staging waiting to be added to a Sydney-bound overnight freight. It's all in a day's work, (or in this case a 45 minute mid-week operating session in my lounge room), on the Philden Coast Railway. It's the kind of modelling that I set out to enjoy... and am finally able to do.

Until next time...

My Pacific National pairing

It's been 3 months since I unvieled 'The Coast'. In that time I've been able to complete a few medium length operating sessions to fine tune what works best, and determine what I need to do operations-wise to integrate Philden Harbour into an expanded Philden Coast layout when I rebuild my staging shelf later in the year. One big thing I am pleased about, was my decision to broaden my layout's time period to include a pair of Pacific National locos to operate on my North Coast Line. It is refreshing to have some relatively modern models in one of my favourite paint schemes.

NR22 was the first of my Pacific National locomotives to arrive on Philden Coast back in February 2023.

BL28 followed in March 2023. These louvre vans are destined for Brandon Industries No. 4 track.

BL28 joined NR22 to become the first new locomotives purchased to run on The Coast. The Pacific National pair joined my 4 surviving incumbents from Philden Street Yard in the form of my CFCLA pairing of JL406 + FL220, and my Indigenous NR's of NR30 + NR52 to give me an initial 6 locos for a mid-sized shelf layout. Not a bad start, and a mix of locos that are visually interesting.

For an up-and-back layout, the BL was a great choice given that it has a cab at both ends. Since getting down to the nitty-gritty of shunting the yard, having the flexibility of a bi-directional loco, (even an NR that can operate long end leading), is something that becomes more noticeable the more you operate.

BL28 runs around the vans and shoves them back alongside the Brandon Industries warehouse doors.

The loco uncouples and will now go to the diesel service tracks to shut down for the day.

BL28 joins NR22 in the diesel service tracks, (No. 2 & 3) to await their next call of duty.

I tend to like that early to mid 2000's era, right through to the early 2010's. Given that my layout can simultaneously have 3 to 4 locos in play at most, I've discovered I simply like pairing my models together on a running 'sesh', and let the combinations on the day define which particular year I'm operating within. One of the funny terms I refer to with my models are 'dance partners', and if I add an 8th loco to my fleet... I keep everything even. The pairings go something like this;

NR22 + BL28 Pacific National.

NR30 + NR52 National Rail (Indigenous locomotives).

JL406 + FL220 CFCLA, (Chicago Freight Car Leasing Australia).

C509 Cootes Industrial (leased locomotive) + ???

So I've been doing a bit of research lately to decide if there's a suitable dance partner for my green C Class loco which I have on pre-order. With a few operating sessions already under my belt, I've ruled out any single direction locos such as the CLP and CLF, or any further large NR sized locomotives such as the GT46C-ACe, C44ACI's or 90 Class. Aside from waiting for any future pre-order announcements or re-runs, there are a couple of interesting possibilities available at the moment that would look great alongside C509.

Whether or not that happens, I'm very much looking forward to my C Class arriving. Having some green and gold on my North Coast layout is going to look great!

Until next time...

Trees by The Harbour

Some new trees ready to be planted by Philden Harbour.

This is my haul from Modellers Warehouse at the recent Brisbane Model Train Show. This year's show felt like a bit of a kickback to the model train exhibitions of the 1990's, with a queue almost 800 metres long before the doors opened on the Saturday, and thanks to the today's pressing economy, about the same amount of money in my pocket as I once rocked up to the door with in 1999. Thankfully I had a list of what I needed. And unless it was on the list it, it couldn't come home with me. No matter how much I was tempted.

These towering pine trees came from a bargain bin and could be cut down to size.

What did prevail was some serious 1990's thrifty shopping. I was on the lookout for something that could resemble some Norfolk Island Pines, and I found a pack of North American tall pines that I hoped could be trimmed to size. Not only were the trunks easy to cut, but the base of the trunks with the lower branches could be turned upside down and planted to resemble a not-so-healthy tree. There were 5 trees in the pack marked down to half price on account of the packaging looking a little shabby, but I'll get 10 trees from this packet.

The patchy-looking pine was a perfect fit for between the two tracks beneath the overpass.

The Norfolk Island Pine will help screen the transition to what is presently my staging shelf, while I'll keep the other 4 to plant on the otherside of the module's corner post when I rebuild the staging shelf as an extension to my harbour scene. The thick clump of trees will help buffer the two scenes and disguise the join, and getting them now means that I don't have to worry about matching colours in the future.

Palm-ies by The Pub!

Next up, I wanted to continue to transform my layout into something a little more Troppo, without relying purely on the backdrop to make a statement. A week before the show I FaceTime called a friend who happened to be shopping at Modellers Warehouse down in Slacks Creek in Brisbane, and after getting a video call walk through of the store, including a friendly wave from its owner Tyson, my friend grabbed whatever palm trees that were in stock and dropped them around on his way home. So after that VIP service, I planted two Coconut Palms and a Washington Palm in the space between the bus depot and where the verandah deck of the Jetty Hotel will overhang the gardens. This adds some coastal vibes for the future customers to enjoy a Parmy under the palm trees when my pub is open for business.

Going a little bananas here, but these will simply represent some wild banana trees growing alongside the rail corridor. Not a working banana farm.

When you think of Coffs Harbour, you think of the Big Banana. So Philden Harbour needed something to place it in close proximity. I've used these MP Scenery Products banana trees before with great success. As with a lot of scenery products that are produced in Eastern Europe, there is still a shortage of products as the Ukraine war continues to impact markets in neighbouring countries. I grabbed the only packet that was available, so for now will have to be content with just the 4 banana trees growing wild alongside the rail corridor. Another 2 Coconut Palms and a second Washington Palm complete the vegetation on the otherside of the tracks from the Jetty Hotel gardens. They add a foreground feature that doesn't obscure my view of trains passing beneath the Philden Street overpass. (Yes, the name of the overpass has stuck from my previous layout, and seems fitting given that it will divide the Philden Harbour yard from the soon to be constructed Philden Beach Station).

My ex-NSW 422 headed up the first train to run beneath the palm trees.

The rail corridor needed some thin vegetation along the front of the layout. These suit perfectly.

The Norfolk Island Pines help soften the exit to staging for now...

...while the green belt either side of the overpass will help disguise the future layout extension.

So, a little bit of model greenthumbing followed this year's Brisbane Model Train Show. The show marked 4 years since I last exhibited a layout, and that was the final showing of my former layout Philden. As you can see in the above photo, only the tram tracks remain to be pulled up off Philden Street and the Jetty Hotel completed to say that this half of my layout is finished. The layout will then be a complete coastal version of the switching yard I set out to build with Philden Street Yard. Which gets me to thinking... should I exhibit this layout in its current configuration at some point this year before I get to rebuilding the staging shelf into the Philden Coast extension?

Given that my Philden Coast extension might take the best part of 18 months for me to complete, debuting this layout at a small show here in Brisbane might be my only opportunity to display this between now and 2025. It's something to think about.

In the meanwhile, stay tuned for an exciting announcement in the coming weeks.

Untill next time...

Brandon Industries now open!

An 18 year long request has finally been granted with the naming of the latest industry to commence advertising their wares on my Philden Coast Railway. Brandon Industries Pty. Ltd. is now the major customer on my NSW North Coast inspired layout. And, as the sign dutifuly proclaims, they are suppliers to the seafood industry since 1997.

Here's my son helping me to exhibit my past layout at the 2005 Union Pacific Model Railway Club of Brisbane's Model Train Show. The irony is that he spent 2 full days running trains with his Dad on a layout whose town was named after his sister. All he asked in return was that I name a building after him. Well... the little guy is now 26 years old, and it has only taken me 18 years to come good on my promise. (Sorry Champ).

So in a show of homage to the little fella who is about to grant his parents Nanna and Poppy status, he now has an industry to keep The Coast stocked with supplies to source his favourite food, seafood.

Having a credible industry on your layout provides a reason to operate.

I've long been happy with the end result on this structure, and the non-descript building had stood on this site since the layout first began its life as Philden Street Yard. For those wanting to know what happened to the buildings from my Philden Street Yard layout (see my Philden Museum page for more), well... nothing really. They are all still here, only being renamed one-by-one. So with the layout's locational move to the New South Wales North Coast, I felt the standalone warehouse needed a credible reason for its existence. Especially if you consider that the building is now pressed against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean rather than a photo montage of bland inner-city industrial buildings.

The signs were once more custom made by myself on my laptop before being printed out, glued to some plain white cardstock, laminated with some clear contact book covering and glued to the roof fascia of the kit building. The kit is the HO scale Walthers Modern Cold Storage Warehouse (kit no. 933-4069), which I first saw on the Tulsa Spur build YouTube series by Steve's Trains back when I first set about replacing my original Philden layout. Unlike Steve's job of kitbashing the structure to serve as a building flat, I opted to kitbash the structure in a smaller footprint that included chopping down the height and adding a rear dock to open up the viewing angle when viewed from the front.

Here is the warehouse pressed against the former Philden Street Yard photo backdrop....

And here's the newly named Brandon Industries pressed against the Philden Harbour foreshore.

Now for that all important question. What goods traffic will this warehouse handle on the layout? As Brandon Industries are suppliers to the seafood trade, it is all inwards traffic. Plastic fishing crates, tubs and industrial size rolls of netting. High tensile fishing wire, bouys, waterproof waders, boat anchor chains and pallets of bagged sodium metabisulphite to make of tubs of preservative to dip all those freshly caught prawns into. And finally commercial sized rolls of plastic bags and waxed cardboard boxes to pack and seal all that fresh caught seafood. It's an industry with an endless appetite, all of which is in turn sold and consumed locally by resorts, restaurants and fish n' chip shops, (more on that to follow). It's all fictitious of course, when in reality the modern North Coast railway line sees very few customers between Sydney and Brisbane.

Sounds like an excuse to run some trains. But only until I'm ready to stop for some prawns and bubbly!

Until next time, cheers!

The Harbourside Services Club

Another building has been re-signed and re-purposed into its new role on the Coast. The former brown bricked building flat that stood against the end backdrop, has gone from luxury inner Melbourne warehouse apartments to become the Harbourside Services Club, your friendly Club on the Coast!

...and with scaled down signage promoting its new role as Your Friendly Club on the Coast!

Once again I designed the signage using the same program I use to design my book covers, with the yellow to orange honeycomb transitioning background pattern chosen to represent an image fitting a modern NSW licensed club. Services Clubs are generally a combined arrangement between sporting clubs, returned services leagues and the likes, and are more popular in NSW than the separate Leagues Clubs and RSL Clubs that are common in Queensland. So I also designed the four unique sporting club logos that display proudly at each end of the sign. In order from left to right, they represent the Jetty Hotel Knights and Philden Beach Sharks Rugby League Clubs, the Philden Harbour Bulls basketball association and the Harbourside Lions AFL Club. Four very cool local sporting clubs based on my favourite real life counterparts.

Surprisingly the printed interior images used to fill the vacant window frames blend well with the blue skies and open water scene behind the building flat. The Harbourside Services Club likely also incorporate the local Surf Lifesaving Club and Philden Harbour Sailing Club as well, and I can simply imagine this being the rear of the building with the front facing the ocean view behind it. Large plate glass windows framing a modern dining lounge with a view, a fancy drive-up entrance complete with ample parking, while inside is the hum of a live band playing and the constant chime of the poker machines... Yep, that sounds about right. So to that extent, the modelled rear building flat serves its role well.

The rear factory doors are still present on the repurposed building, adding some history to the scene.

I like to imply a bit of history behind the things I model, so perhaps this building once began its life as a local dairy processor or butter factory on the New South Wales North Coast, before being redeveloped after it closed into a local community focal point. Who knows? Afterall, the rear loading doors are still present despite being long out of use. I like to plant the suggestion in the mind of viewer and have them imagine their own story that connects them to the scene, rather than simply tell them a fabricated history. It's amazing what a fictional layout will still remind the viewer of from their own experiences and memories.

Next up I'll unviel the recently named industry that is the centrepiece of the Harbour Yard. My son has long reminded me that I haven't named anything on the layout after him, despite him accompanying me to a model railway show for an entire weekend back in 2005. I guess that simple request is long overdue...

The Historic Haunted Bookstore

Here's a tale of a much travelled bookstore. This building began its life as a laser cut kit of the Walker Models Bait, Tackle, and Fish n' Chip Shop, originally planned for a prominent foreshore position on my Philden Road layout before being repurposed to sit above the Philden Street overpass on my follow-up layout Philden Street Yard, (see my Philden Museum page for more).

Here it is sitting at the top of Philden Harbour's planned beach on my Philden Road layout...

...and here it is prior to being cut-in-half, to fit a position on my Philden Street Yard layout.

The building was started, before work on it was paused for two years while I reconstructed my shelf layout into what became Philden Street Yard. The double premises storefront was then carefully cut in two to stand in its current position atop the overpass. I have saved the parts that make up the rest of the building to rebuild as a separate standalone structure elsewhere on the layout at a later date.

The MDF sections of a laser cut kit can be terrible to kitbash, as even a sharp hobby knife tends to splay the cuts and cause the fibres of the pressed board to fan out, but taking my time, (as if two years wasn't already long enough!), I was able to slowly cut, sand and fit the structure's shell into its new smaller configuration. The rest of the process just followed as per the instructions, remembering to trim the outer shell of the finer laser cut birchwood to fit the front and rear of the building.

For the side walls however, I decided to model them as aged, rendered concrete walls, something which I am going to cover in my Model Railway Weathered Wonders book. So after masking off the front and side walls, I spray painted them with an ordinary rattle can and spent a considerable amount of time distressing the paint as it hardened. As you can see, the end results look a little different to some of my other buildings.

Once dried, I sealed it with some acrylic matte clear coat and could then get to work finishing the structure as a bookstore that I had planned for my inner Melbourne themed layout.

Inside, the building was detailed only where the sight line would be visible through the large front glass windows. Choosing to model a haunted bookstore, I added some cheap discount store Halloween buttons to the store's interior.

The part-finished structure then fitted into its original planned location on Philden Street.

Despite finishing the majority of the structure over the Australian summer whilst watching the cricket on TV, by the end of 2022 there were some things about the layout that were preventing me from progressing any further and work on the building was once more halted.

Model railroading is a fully immersive hobby, and the eras we model and the trains we collect are often tied to memories. So early in 2023, thanks largely to changing my layout's backdrop, Philden Street Yard was quickly and quietly transformed into what I had originally set out to model following the demise of my original Philden layout. The shelf layout, along with the structures and trains on it, could now be tied to some great memories of my own family holidays on the NSW North Coast, while the ghosts of the past stirred up following the loss of a family member late in 2022 were once more free to leave. Or in the case of the Historic Haunted Bookstore, serve as a reminder that we can champion over them.

I now have to do something about those former tram tracks! The locals are complaining...

So ignoring the road repairs that are ahead in order to remove the tram tracks over Philden Street, or is it Philden Road? I'm so confused... HARBOUR BOOOOKS, the Haunted Bookstore is now open for business at the top of town. I custom designed and printed the bookstore signs using the same program I design all of my book covers with. You may even be able to glimpse some model ghosts inside the bookstore, such as the floating spectre of the second floor. It should become more visible after I add some interior lighting to the building.

The cartoon pirates on the bookstore sign are supposed to be my wife Denise (L) and myself (R).

As the section to the left of the bookstore will become the join line for the second module, I will soon start planning the transition down to the waterline for my imaginary rendition of a mini Coffs Creek scene. As my grown adult children are all into finding these hidden bits of trivia planted in movies known as easter eggs, the writer in me couldn't help but start planting some smaller details that hold greater meaning within this layout. You'll notice on the window of the bookstore is a poster advertising my first novel, The Long Way Home. I toured with that book back in 2009, (see here), visiting Coffs Harbour in the process. Even one of the chapters within the book takes place on the foreshore by Coffs Harbour Jetty. As the layout now centres roughly around a period of time from 2005 to 2015, it seems a fitting clue to hide, as do the other book covers from my subsequent novels that are to be cryptically hidden on the layout.

So, after completing a bookstore that has historic ties to three of my layouts, the Jetty Hotel is the next long overdue structure to complete, and I'm already thinking of what details I can hide within its walls. Time will tell...

Welcome to The Coast!

After years of deliberations and do-overs, Philden finally has a home on the NSW North Coast.

After two years of modelling my Australian HO scale layout Philden Street Yard, 2023 started with the shock decision to uproot my inner-Melbourne inspired layout and transplant it smack-bang on the New South Wales North Coast. It took a little over a month for me to size and rebuild the backdrop, and my new layout Philden Coast can now be revealed against the stunning shoreline of Coffs Harbour, NSW.

This is the layout I first set out to build in 2019. It is a layout that has a connection to some great memories for me, that being our family holidays along the NSW North Coast between 2005 to 2018, in the time before both our kids grew up, moved out and married. I'll never get that time again, and now Dad's famous holiday roadside stops to photograph a train, every station and any railway bridge are immortalised in our loungeroom whenever they come over to visit.

The name and logo for this layout pay hommage to my not-so-distant modelling past. Once more keeping the Philden theme alive, I designed the logo to pay respect to my first North Coast attempt Philden Road, by including the two palm trees that also adorned the Philden Road logo. Along with Philden Street Yard and my original Philden layout, they can now all be viewed in the Philden Museum. And if there's one little gem that is the stand out in the top photo, it's that the Goods Shed has now survived to feature on everyone of my Philden layouts. It may look a little rustier by the seaside, but it's still standing strong!

Philden Street Yard is now Harbour Yard on my NSW North Coast layout Philden Coast.

I've long championed the idea of making backdrops removable in my books, and in the case of revamping a bookshelf layout it allows you to simply slide the old backdrop out and replace it with a new one. The tricky part was aligning the clouds and ocean horizon in the corner behind the warehouse and brown building flat that was affixed to the side backdrop, and it took a couple of attempts at printing, horizontally flipping the image and resizing it to align as close to perfect as was possible, and it is a subject I feel warrants a future book to talk readers through the advanced process. It's a simple enough idea in principle, but one that proves difficult to execute.

The grime and industrial feel of the rail yard is still there, only now it is set against a sub-tropical slice of Aussie paradise. My wife agrees that this is now a much better highlight in our loungeroom!

Thankfully now that the backdrop is in place, my layout can return to being fully operational in its original configuration. I started building Philden Street Yard in the middle of 2021 during that wonderful time of lockdowns during the pandemic. So while the transformation to Philden Coast has only taken place over the past month or so, the layout module, track configuration, structures, overpass and scenery all date back to 2021. The framework dates back even further, as it was the original base that supported Philden Road. There were a lot of mixed reasons for my deciding to walk away from modelling my Victorian inspired layout, and I explain why on my Philden Museum page if you care to read more. But for this post... It's celebration time!

Harbour Yard is my fictional reincarnation of Coffs Harbour Yard. Despite the actual yard being removed after 1996, I reinstated it to serve a newly built private industry and to provide service tracks for Thunderbird rescue locomotives for any stranded trains on the North Coast line.

Any new layout project needs a new locomotive for that extra excitement. So who else managed to get their hands on the latest BL Class locomotive from Auscision Models? They're just lovely aren't they? I'd go as far as saying they're perhaps the best sounding locomotive I've owned to date. Part of the appeal of modelling a broader period of time, (2005-2018), is the ability to simply enjoy models of the trains you've enjoyed seeing in real life. So I'm no longer letting myself get bogged down in making lists of which numbered locomotive ran on which line in what livery at a particular time. I've done that in the past, and after a while it does your head in and just feels like you are limiting your enjoyment to modelling a cloudy day in August.

Even the seagulls look more at home by Philden Harbour.

By the time I convert the staging shelf into a fully-scenicked adjoining module, Philden Coast will be 3.3 metres long, and have two separate yards, Philden Beach and Philden Harbour, connected by a short single tracked bridge over Coffs Creek. Hence the name Philden Coast to cover both locations. I believe it will be most enjoyable to operate with 3 to 4 locomotives at a time, so for that I don't need a large fleet to be able to cover a broad spread of years. Central to me being able to pull-off modelling something representative of the North Coast line during those years was being able to add some Pacific National locomotives. I did so by getting the recently released BL28 in the PacNat intermodal livery as was seen on the North Coast, and by adding a 3rd NR Class locomotive to my collection in the form of NR22. Combined with my existing Indigenous pair of NR Class locos, my weathered CFCLA pairing of ex-422 and 442 diesels, and a soon to come C Class, I have a loco for every day of the week.

I'm more than happy to have transformed this layout into my own slice of miniature railfan paradise!

So next up are some bridge repairs to the Philden Street overpass, (apparently the locals are complaining about some obselete tram tracks breaking through the road surface), some signage for the Brandon Industries warehouse, (suppliers to the seafood industry), some lettering on the brown building flat behind it, (Harbourside Services Club) and a sign for the just completed haunted bookstore at the top of Philden Street, (Harbour Booooks!). The Jetty Hotel with views over the umm.... jetty, remains the only structure for me to complete to say that this half of the layout is both complete, and completely revamped.

I'm very happy to have my joy back for this layout. Afterall, that is the sole purpose of building a model railway. Now if you'll excuse me for the weekend, I have some bubbles to pop, and some trains to run. This should be fun! Have a great weekend everyone, and if you like my little North Coast layout or even if you managed to purchase a BL Class loco, let me know in the comments below.