The Violalakenslip layout frame

In keeping with my IKEA themed model railway layout that occupies one wall of our loungeroom, I colour matched the small layout frame that I built for Bryn Nadolig with the IKEA Eket display cases that this little OO9 layout will sit upon. When I sent a pic of my finished 1150 mm x 550 mm white and clear pine effort by phone to my friend AV with the single word viola beneath it, Anthony's reply came back that it looks like a Violalakenslip. Aisle 25, section B12 at IKEA....

I love it! But the truth is, this is one of the easiest little layout projects I've done to date. It started with a 596 mm x 1200 mm x 7 mm single sheet of plywood that I first cut down to a size of 550 mm x 1150 mm as outlined in my previous post sacrificing length for functionality.

To build the frame, I bought 2 lengths of 30 mm x 18 mm x 2.7 metre long FJ primed pine from my local Bunnings Warehouse, and cut the sections to fit.

There are no fancy corner joins, simply 2 sections cut to a length of 1150 mm for the long sides of the layout, and 4 lengths cut to 514 mm (550 mm minus 2 times the 18 mm width of the timber), to use as the short side ends and additional supports.

I glued one section at a time to the underside of my plywood board using extra strength Tarzan's Grip wood glue.

As this glue grabs hold very quickly, just make sure you have test fitted each section before stringing a line of glue along the plywood. A clamp placed at each end will hold it in place as you work, and to ensure there wasn't going to be any warping or risk of a stray section of timber slipping out of alignment, I drilled and countersunk some holes through the plywood to anchor the framework in place with some 25 mm wood screws.

The plywood sheet was glued then anchored down with a few countersunk 25 mm long wood screws.

The screw holes and any gaps between each join were then puttied and left to dry overnight before sanding.

Any good finish is only as good as the preparation you put into it. So I sanded the entire frame edge using an orbital sander until it was nice and smooth. Although I could have just painted the frame edge and underside in the one colour, I thought 'why not make the edge strip of the plywood stand out by finishing it with some clear wood varnish?' The only extra work it involved was a 2 step process using some masking tape as outlined below...

I clear varnished the edge strip of the plywood by masking off the primed white timber beneath it.

The masking tape could then peel off easily leaving a sharp line of clear varnished plywood.

Once dry, the reverse was done. The plywood edge was masked off and the timber painted gloss white.

The masking tape pulls away leaving a sharp line between the gloss white and clear varnish.

I applied a total of 2 coats of clear varnish to the plywood edge and underside of the layout board. While for the primed FJ pine I applied 4 coats of water based gloss white, the same colour that I used when building my Philden Beach layout frame. The finished result is a uniform appearance once the OO9 layout is sat atop my IKEA furniture as can be seen below...

Viola! Bryn Nadolig's finished framework is finally ready to have some track laid.

As this layout is a small table top affair, there is going to be no backdrop added to it. I know, I know, you're probably thinking why given that I wrote a book on Model Railway Backdrop Basics. However, given that the layout will come out from its display position beneath Philden Beach at Christmas time, I want the layout to be able to be viewed from all sides whenever the family is gathered around the table. Including a backdrop will make that impossible. My next task is to build the hill in the centre of the layout using some insulation foam board. It will slope up gently from behind the slate station building, ending in a rock cutting against the railway line at the far left side of the layout. Rather than incorporating a backdrop, the hill is going to act as a visual divider.

A layout is meant to be fun, and this one will be no exception. Given that this is both a small table sized layout, and a Christmas themed model railway, I'm unsure if there will be enough material, or interest for that matter, to start planning another book around it. So, instead I'll use these blog posts to gauge people's interest and preserve the step-by-step process just in case I ever change my mind. Modelling in another scale compared to my decade long HO Australian efforts, is proving to be a welcome escape as I write my next Philden Model Railway book. Now that my Violalakenslip layout frame is complete, over this Australian summer I'm planning to flit between working on my next book and this little layout. Depending on how I feel each day.

My time writing model railway books is drawing to an end. So please, if you like what you've read, then feel free to leave a comment below. Or better still, show your support by buying me a coffee. Simply click on the blue coffee cup to the right and send a struggling writer a small tip... https://www.buymeacoffee.com/phildenmodelrailway

The Jetty Hotel refit

It's time to catch-up on some of the improvements that have occurred since Philden Beach made it's exhibition debut back in September of this year. To complete my NSW North Coast setting, the square shell of a structure that sat atop the overpass looking out over the rail yard for the past two years, has finally been refitted as the historic Jetty Hotel.

With the Coffs Harbour Jetty such a noticeable feature of my layout's backdrop, there really wasn't a better choice of name to adorn the top of the Century-old sandstone and clapboard hotel.

The kit is a Walker Models laser cut timber kit of the Royal Hotel, a building that is seen on quite a number of Australian model railway layouts. However, I have a penchant for doing things differently, and along with asking Stuart to custom change the signage to say Jetty Hotel when I first started planning to build a NSW North Coast layout, I also set about altering the appearance somewhat, starting with opening up the window frames on the top balcony level to provide a better glimpse inside the structure.

Some years back, a chap wrote into a magazine that one of my previous layouts had been featured in, lamenting the drop in quality of modelling given that my structures had omitted the roof capping. Fair point I guess. However I just don't like the look of a folded strip of paper glued along the ridge peaks, nor using strip styrene which tends to look a bit out of scale.

So, given that I was working with the styrene roof sections supplied with the kit, I turned to a sneaky cheat trick that I have been using with great success, in that I simply filed the ridge caps smooth with a small hobby file prior to painting the roof.

Once painted, the lines on the corrugated styrene sheet look as though they disappear into the smoothly filed strip along the ridge peaks, and as far as I'm concerned looks more to scale as simulated ridge capping than using a thin strip of folded paper. I use a silver paint pen to highlight the ridge peaks prior to spray painting the roof with Rust-o-leum silver, as this adds a slight elevated layer of paint to the ridge that remains visible once painted. As you can see, the building is a background structure, and as such will remain away from view from the armchair judges.

The next step was to paint the .mdf board shell of the kit to resemble a rendered sandstone wall.

The roof was then painted, weathered in 50 shades of grey and grime, sealed with clear matte acrylic and set aside to dry while I painted and weathered the sandstone shell of the building. This is where I once again veered away from building the kit as supplied, given that it had parts to finish all four sides in weatherboard cladding. Instead, I masked and sprayed the building shell with Rust-o-leum Ivory Silk as the basis for the sandstone colour, then achieved the weathering effect as I outlined in my book Model Railway Weathered Wonders.

You may recognise the above picture from pages 66-67, as it was one of the final weathering methods to make it into the book.

The finished look resembles weathered and peeling, rendered sandstone walls.

I left the roof removable on this structure, as I wanted to have a little fun for my own benefit by modelling a stage complete with a band playing inside on the top level. The HO scale figures are by Noch, and the packet I used was the 15563 Street Performers.

I could only fit 5 of the 6 figures on my small stage, and the guy from this packet standing infront of a red music box cart I'd already installed as a spooky looking prop inside my Haunted Bookstore. The stage was built from card, with the images sourced from the internet, resized, printed and glued to the card. I double imposed the stage by printing a second identical image and cutting it to the outline of the curtains to give the stage some 3D depth. The rest of the interior was painted satin gold, so that the interior lighting would throw out a warm glow.

The band has just started playing for the night, and my wife and I are first onto the dancefloor.

Knowing that I wanted the band to be visible through the open French-windows, I built a raised stage and kept the area in front clear of any figurines that would only block the view. Except of course for my wife Denise and I, who just happened to be the first couple to hit the dance floor. (Everyone else is still outside on the top balcony drinking... and probably watching the trains!).

I added the French-windows and figures to the upper balcony before gluing the balcony in place.

Modelling the French-windows was again a cheeky shortcut... I simply filed the as-provided window frame sashes flush, glued a benchtop bar in place on the lower portion of the opened-up window frame, and glued the windows on an angle to look as though they had been concertinaed open. I did the same with the doors so that it looks like the crowd is coming -and-going from the balcony and the stage area.

The figures were this time a mix of Woodlands Scenics WOOA1836 HO scale Tourists and WOOA1833 Lovers. The unused ones will pop-up somewhere else on the layout in good time. I didn't want to over-populate the upper level with too many figurines, as once the roof is in place, I still wanted the band to be easily seen inside. Plus they're expensive little critters once you start ordering a packet of this and a packet of that!

A false bar was added against the left side wall, and an interchangable band poster to the outside.

As the kit had extra doors and stairwells on the upper level that I did not include, I back filled the stairwell doors with some Chooch Industries latex stone wall sheeting I had leftover in my scrap box, and topped the scrap box back up with my leftover doors and stairwell frames. You never know when stuff like this will come in handy.

Some white styrene roof guttering and rusty downpipes were added, and the building sat in place.

I finished the building off with some decorative stone capping around the street-side entrance doors, and added some H channel strip styrene to the roof edging to represent freshly-installed roof guttering. That's right, I cheated again by not even painting it. It looks all-white to me!

The balcony facades were glued into place, and the balcony roof secured to the verandah posts with some super glue. Only then did I notice that one of the verandah posts was sitting a mm lower than the other three, giving the balcony roof the impression of having sagged a little in the middle, (see very top photo). But, being a Century-old building, I decided to leave it as is, and tell myself that it adds a little character and charm.

Finally I painted and fixed some H channel styrene to the side of the building and made myself a set of 6 different band posters to slide in-and-out on the side of the building. I feel that over time, they will add some background variety for future photos of my trains trundling in-and-out of the railway yard below. So more on that later. As for the remnant trams tracks from the days of Philden Street Yard, (see the Philden Museum if you'd like to read all about that), they too are now gone, and I've almost finished modelling the Philden Beach Markets scene that will replace them atop the overpass.

From here on, it's all a bit of fun for me. As I continue working on the next and final Philden Model Railway book, there is a lot happening model-wise behind the scenes. I'll try to keep you updated as soon as I can. Until next time...

Philden Street Yard Episode 6

Well... Philden Street is now on the final stretch towards being complete! Twelve months after my Secret Project PV3 cryptic posts revealed the new inner Melbourne switching layout I was building, the namesake Philden Street overpass is in place and the Restaurant tram is standing above the railway tracks to give this layout a sense of time and place. It seems that nothing screams Melbourne more than a Melbourne tram!

After 12 months of only photographing beneath the overpass, it's time to complete Philden Street!

Inbetween the before and after images I have shared here, there is a 7 minute video montage of how I built this scene on the YouTube link at the top of this post. I wanted to see what I could sneak into my next book Model Railway Scenery Secrets, but this urban street scene also leant itself really well for a video update for Episode 6.

The tram tracks and plate girder sides are in place, I can then add all the extra detail later.

Philden Street can now be completed with finer details, populated with people and have overhead tram wires strung at a later date. The two structures that stand high above Philden Street Yard can now be completed infront of the TV over the summer as I joked about in the video, all while watching some cricket in the comfort of airconditioning.

The two buildings I am going to have a little fun with. They are both Walker Models laser-cut buildings manufactured right here in Queensland, Australia, and as you can see, the Fish n' Chip and Tackle shops have already been cut in half and are ready to have the interior detailed and transformed into a one-of-a-kind storefront that is sure to draw some attention. It's the first building I will complete. As I'm an Author, I'll leave you to figure out just what it might be. Although I may or may not have let the secret slip in my video above... I honestly can't remember.

Until next time...

Sitting on the shelf

I finally have my staging shelf operational. But like shelves, it has come with highs and lows.

From the high of a book launch and converting my layout to DCC, to having to lay low for a while with COVID. That's pretty much been my January so far. Any thoughts we had of 2022 being a better year lasted less than a week! After coming down sick, waiting 4 days for the local testing centre to restock their kits so that we could get a booking for a test, and queueing from 4 am for the thrill of having a little pokey stick shoved up your nose, my time off work over the Christmas period was extended by an extra 2 weeks.

Ordinarily that would be my cue to get some stuff done on the layout. However, while I can honestly say I've had a worse case of the flu in the past, the thing I found with getting COVID, was that every ache and pain I ever had at some point in my life decided to come back and visit. Although I'd finished building, sanding and painting the staging shelf over 3 days prior to Christmas, thanks to COVID I couldn't find the strength to pick up a pair of rail cutters! Fortunately, as is the case with most things, the worst passes and things begin to return to normal. Hah! Normal... like anyone knows what that is anymore!

The staging shelf sits to the left side of the layout, and the 2 tracks that lead from the layout beneath the Philden Street overpass transition onto the staging shelf where they fan out into a 4 track yard with a 5th track serving as the arrival/runaround track. Before Christmas, I had lined the perimeter of the staging yard with a strip of timber to eliminate the risk of having anything fall off. I used some 30 x 11 mm lengths of pre-primed finger jointed pine and cut, glued and clamped them into position before sanding and painting the entire staging shelf in the same gloss white water based enamel to match in with the rest of the layout.

I lined the perimeter of the staging yard with 30 x 11 mm edging timber.

Slowly, (over the course of a week and a half while feeling washed out), I did the strenuous task of laying and wiring track on a staging shelf a little over 1.5 metres long. I say that sarcastically, because ordinarily it would only have taken most modellers a single afternoon to complete!

I glued the track to avoid having nails come through the base given the plywood was only 7 mm thick.

I glued the track into place directly onto the painted surface with some Weldbond extra strength white glue, and the finished arrangement of black track on white looks neat and tidy, almost like an abstract piece of model railway art. I'll also decorate the front fascia of the staging shelf with some black vinyl-cut stick-on letters as I did with my last layout, just to give the overall appearance a museum like finish.

I carefully cut and filed the opening for the DCC control panel face to mount it to the layout.

My Christmas present from my wife was a NCE Power Cab DCC system, and I was able to cut and mount the panel to the front of the staging shelf and still have the main digital receiver component tuck in safely beneath the plywood surface. I just used a pair of connector clips to bridge the bus wires to the staging shelf tracks so that the whole thing is easy to disconnect and pack into our car in sections for whenever I'm able to exhibit the layout, or have to move house.

I also found a guy who goes by the name of beanburgh on eBay who 3D prints throttle holders for most brands of DCC handsets. I'm all for supporting the little guys, so for $10 plus postage my NCE throttle now has a permanent place to stay safe alongside the control face plate.

Although I've still wired 2 of the 4 sidings to be able to have the power isolated via a toggle switch, the entire layout is now wired into the DCC receiver, and trains are now controlled by my new DCC throttle. All two of them!

View from the staging shelf looking towards the layout.

That for me is a problem at the moment. Not just because I'm still waiting on my pair of pre-ordered Indigenous NR Class locos to arrive, but because of the worldwide unavailability of DCC decoders. No-one seems to have them on the shelf, (another pun intended).

I guess what that is making me do is figure out which locos I really want to convert to DCC sound, and which locos I will just convert to DCC non-sound. As my layout resides in our lounge room, I'm quickly learning when not to fire up the joyful sound of an EMD 16-567-BC engine, (usually whenever my wife has claimed the TV for an afternoon of watching Virgin River). Having a few silent locos on the roster may not be a bad idea! It will at least help ease the cost of converting my existing DC locos. Anyway, having just had so much time off from our business, January has shelved those plans for now at least, (and there's another shelf pun).

View from the layout looking towards the staging shelf.

Its nice to finally have a propper staging yard. I can load up a 4 wagon train on each track in staging, and one by one work each train to a specific siding in Philden Street Yard. When staging is empty, and Philden Street Yard is full, I can work them all back again. Compared to past experiences operating little cameo shunts like this, having a sound equipped locomotive actually slows down the operating session, and makes each move more thought out and purposeful.

Maybe it was all the time off I had, but the amount of time per day where I'll walk past the layout and think 'I might just run a train' has gone up considerably. From that point of view, I think that converting my layout to DCC has been a success. I discovered a few little hiccups along the way that I was able to resolve, mainly with code 100 track that required some filing away on the backside of the frogs, but the main thing is that it works, and works well. Converting a layout from DC to DCC also helped give me some timely material for my next book Model Railway Trackside Tips. All my years of trial and error may finally pay off.

B65 prepares to take its train from staging to its destination in Philden Street Yard.

I guess whenever you reach a new milestone like this in our hobby, it quickly becomes the new standard. From that point of view, all future locomotive purchases have just become all that more expensive. Compared to the cost of retro-fitting DCC sound to a locomotive, it's actually better value to purchase a sound-fitted loco upfront. That's where I'm left sitting on the shelf at the moment, (I'd better make that my last shelf pun for this post)! Finding the right balance of locomotives to fill out my roster between what is available now in DCC sound equipped and ready to run form, retro-fitting sound to my existing locos when DCC decoders are out-of-stock, or pre-ordering DCC sound locomotives that have no gaurantee of being here before I'm faced with moving house again, is causing some procrastination on my part. And its something I don't seem to have the answer for right now.

B65 arrives at Philden Street Yard with a short grain transfer.

In the midst of all this, one of the new additions to my rollingstock roster I am extremely pleased to have added were some VHGF hoppers I bought from Trainworld in Melbourne. I had one lone Auscision Vline/Carlton United Brewery VHGF that I'd acquired second hand from somewhere, but hadn't realised that Trainworld in Melbourne still had their own branded hoppers available until I stumbled across them on their website. At $180 for a pack of 3, they are equally as good as the Auscision version and give me a 4 wagon grain train that can run as a transfer trip to my industrial district. I can now start planning how to incorporate it into my operations. At this stage I'm thinking my unnamed Distribution Centre may be best served as a micro-brewery, as it could take in hopper loads of malting barley, and ship out loads of palletised beer in my VLCX louvered vans.

Building the staging shelf was the final big project I needed to complete on Philden Street Yard. Converting the layout to DCC was another substantial investment that I can also now tick off my list of things to do. Sound chipping my remaining locomotives may take some time figuring out when decoders will become available in stock again, so maybe I should now turn my attention to completing the few remaining structures on the layout and finishing the namesake overpass. When I can pull myself away from sounding the horn on my locos that is!

Building the staging yard

The staging yard framing is now in place beyond Philden Street overpass.

After 12 weeks of nursing my torn knee back to health, I finally ventured into the garage for the first time since mid-September to start work on my staging shelf for Philden Street Yard. If I hadn't torn the meniscus in my right knee, I would have had the staging yard operational by now and be working on the finishing touches in readiness for the layout's first outing in 2022. Unfortunately that will no longer be the Bundaberg Model Train & Hobby Expo next year as hoped. The application deadline was just too soon for me to gaurantee having Philden Street Yard completed by March. I'm now hoping for the layout to debut at the Railway Modellers Club of Queensland's Pine Rivers Train & Hobby Expo on July 9 & 10, 2022.

The staging shelf is something that I've given a lot of thought to, while also managing to resist the urge to turn it into a second scenic module. As such, its just going to be a big 1575 mm long, flat expanse of sidings holding trains waiting to venture into Philden Street Yard. I'll be painting the timber framing white to match in with the existing layout furniture, and am still deciding exactly what I'll do for the surface. Either clear stained ply, painted satin black or painted gloss white are the leading contenders so far. But for now, I at least have the framework finished.

I drilled 2 holes to glue some dowel locator lugs in place.

The 6 mm dowel joins are glued on the staging frame only, and slide into the holes on the layout end.

The staging yard's ply surface will have a lip that straddles the join to butt up against the existing track.

The next job for me to complete is to line the top of the staging shelf with 7 mm plywood, which is the same thickness I used on the layout. The ply surface will give the lightweight frame the rigidity it needs and I'll glue the track to the surface to avoid having track pins come through the plywood. I can then work out where I'll mount the power cab faceplate for the NCE Power Cab DCC system that I'll install over the Christmas break.

The staging framework for Philden Street Yard is in place, while my new Queensland micro sits below.

After Philden Street Yard, I now only have plans to build the Queensland micro layout that you can see is already sitting below the staging yard shelf for Philden Street Yard. The paper plan shows the track design for the little 4 track switching layout, and I just need to trim 90 mm off the end of the frame so that it lines up with the IKEA shelving units that it rests on.

It feels good to be working on the layout again! Bad knees aside, I at least used my downtime wisely to finish the first of my Philden Model Railway books. It is currently waiting in the publisher's queue over the Christmas break, ready to have the first copies printed when they return in the new year.

The other big thing for me right now, is the anticipation of turning Philden Street Yard into a sound equipped theatre of model train bliss! The NCE Power Cab system is wrapped and waiting under the tree, and I have a DCC sound B65 West Coast Railway B Class and an FL220 CFCLA 422 Class rearing to hit the rails. With 2 more DCC sound locos on the way in the form of my long awaited Indigenous NR Classes, I'm wondering if 4 DCC sound locos will be enough? (I do have a trio of quiet DC locos in the form of NR75, P19 and A81). But the temptation is always there to add just one more! I feel it would have to be another Victorian locomotive however to even up the score. With what's available now, and what has been announced for the future, that leaves only the C Class, G Class and BL Class in my era if I wanted to play the waiting game. Or another B Class right here and now, that would have to be either B74 in preserved VR livery, or the B80 in Murraylander yellow which I also quite like.

I'm not sure what to do there as I also like the ex-NSW 442's in the form of the R&H Transport JL404 and CFCLA JL406. From what I'm led to believe they were mainly Sydney-based locos in the early 2001-2004 period. For a change, its a real nice problem to have.

Philden Road Part Nineteen

 ...or the one about completing the overpass and setting the scene for the rest of the layout.

It's time for an update of how Philden Road is progressing. With a new layout rule in effect which states that neither line shall be placed out of service for more than 12 hours at a time, I've made considerable progress since my last update in November, all while still being able to fiddle-fart about with some small operating sessions to test that everything works as I'd envisioned. It's a case of so far so good.

One thing that I'm beginning to admire about my approach with this layout, is that I've become less afraid to rip out a scene or redo a feature if it doesn't turn out as well as I'd expected. Case-in-point was the namesake overpass that divides the two modules of the layout. After not being happy with how the first incarnation turned out, and taking onboard a fellow modellers advice, I removed the unloved span above the NSW North Coast line and scratchbuilt a new span to blend in with the Rix highway kit section I'd used to cross the QLD narrow gauge line.

Inspiration comes from somewhere, even for a fictious layout such as this. In this instance, I wanted to replicate the rock-proof screen gaurds fixed to the ballustrade of bridge overpasses from about the mid to late 1990's to stop vandals from throwing rocks at passing trains. I'd photographed the road overpass immediately to the south of the railway station at Coffs Harbour with such a screen in place, so used this image as inspiration for my Phills Harbour scene. It is only fashioned from some strip styrene and bits and pieces from my modeller's scrap box, but the end result is something that helps set the mood for the location and era I am trying to model.

Departing south from Coffs Harbour station, this XPT is ducking beneath the Campbelltown St bridge.

I rebuilt the left side of Philden Road overpass to blend in with the Rix highway overpass kit at right.

The rock-proof fence helps set the time period and establish a focal point for this scene.

Once the ballustrade was in place, I turned my attention to the roadway. To give the road a well-worn and patched up appearance, I masked off different squares at a time with blue painter's tape, and painted several different shades of grey. Next I weathered the surface with a few passes of the airbrush using three different mixtures of thinned-down acrylic paint; Model Master reefer grey, Vallejo black wash and Vallejo engine grime wash.

The road surface is going to be prominently visible, so I put a lot of time into making it a feature.

I masked of random squares of the roadway, and painted it in different shades of asphalt.

When dry, I removed the tape, weathered the road and added a concrete sidewalk.

The effect on the roadway is amongst the best finish I have achieved to date on a road surface, and left me glad that I pried my first earlier bridge section from above the NSW North Coast line and binned it. The completed Philden Road overpass instantly set the scene for how the rest of this... err, scene, would look.

A few locomotives soon to be retired from my layout pass beneath the new look overpass.

The next area on the layout I revised was my locomotive roster, and this is one area that has since been revised further after taking these few photos! Initially I wanted to capture the changing 90's era of operations on the New South Wales North Coast line. But 1991 to 2000 is a pretty broad time period to be modelling considering that National Rail was established smack in the middle of that. Even with the locomotives that I'd collected, it soon became obvious that you can't model everything. Keeping early 1990's NSW Government owned locos such as 442 and 80 class diesels on the roster meant creating a separate rollingstock roster of appropriately lettered goods wagons to run with them. Given the scaled back nature of this project, 8 locomotives seemed totally unnecessary for a 3 to 4 track Inglenook yard. I eventually decided upon a 1997 to 2001 era, and ruled a line through any locomotive or rollingstock item that didn't belong.

That leaves me with a fleet of 3 x NR locomotives and my 2 x Northern Rivers Railroad locomotives to cover my late 1990's era, (more on these in a later post), all of which are well suited to run alongside my Countrylink XPT set. For me, my whole NSW North Coast roster is about having some of the locomotives I remembered from when I was a young lad, still working alongside some of the newer Australian horsepower of the time. As for those NR class locomotives? They marked the beginning of a new era when they burst onto the scene in 1996, around the same time that I became a Dad. The NR's, (and my kids) are now around 25 years old! Where has the time gone?

I've just found that modelling an entire decade with this layout would have drained more money from my bank account than I was comfortable with. By moving on any item that doesn't belong between 1997 and the turn of the Millenium, I can now send some money back the other way.

Deciding to leave the cement plant off was a big dilemna... I'll miss this guy's face.

After returning from my summer holiday break with a pair of fresh eyes, the next scene-changer I decided to omit was the cement plant that I'd long planned to recycle from my old layout. As much as I like the familiarity of this structure, it really overpowered the beachside scene. I had to ask myself what mood was I trying to portray with this layout. Was it the industrial seaside scene we'd just seen at Gladstone? Or did I want to capture the fun beachside vibes from past family holidays? The cement plant made it a touch difficult to reach the ground throw beside the signal box anyway. So in the end the good vibes won out. I'll now pack the cement plant carefully away once more in a box, just in case I should use it on another small project in the future.

I guess these two photos can now reside in the Phills Harbour Museum. They can serve as a flashback to the Old Days before the Phills Harbour Foreshore redevelopment of the early 1990's, in much the same way as Coffs Harbour Foreshore was redeveloped following the closure of the railway jetty.

And gone! The final photo before the big foreshore redvelopment of the 1990's.

In its place a Fish n' Chips shop and a Fishing Tackle charter company are already erecting a new two story building. While the council has just completed a concrete esplanade linking the beachfront to the jetty and railway station. The whole project involved hours of marking out paper templates and cutting and gluing 6 mm cork floor tiles to create a seamless transition along the harbour wall. And ignore the foreign Victorian loco that seems to have popped up in the above photo. It was on loan while I measured train lengths and clearances for another top secret micro-project that I have in the pipeline.

I started on the Walker Models Fish n' Chips shop and drew a paper template for the foundations.

I used the template to cut a cork floor tile, and fixed it in place with white caulk, (No More Gaps).

The cork tile needed to be pinned in place while the caulk dried overnight.

The Walker Models Fish n' Chip shop can then be built alongside the beach.

So there you have it. The overpass is essentially complete and the scene is now set for how I will build the rest of the layout. Although I've glued the sub-structures together on some of the buildings, they're not fixed in place so that I can take them off the layout and work on them at a later date, (perhaps on a table in front of the TV when footy season kicks off again). I'm building a footprint that the structures will drop into so that I can keep progressing with the scenery.

I know folks often say stuff like 'next up I'm going to start work on... (insert whatever project here),' but with this layout I'm finding I can wake up on a Saturday morning, go to the beach for a swim and a coffee, and come back not knowing what I'm in the mood to do next. I just know that as long as I do a little something each week, the layout gets that little closer to being finished.