Added enthusiasm!

With the arrival of the Bachmann Ffestiniog Railway Double Fairlie 'Livingston Thompson' in my 009 gauge fleet there is a renewed enthusiasm to finish the layout. As I have explained before my progress on matters happens on a random haphazard manner so how this current enthusiasm will manifest itself into progress to a finished layout is a matter which I don't even know the answer to! However progress has been made. Mrs Woody had settled down for an evening of favorite TV murder mystery programmes (should I be worried by her passion for these types of programme?) so I took the opportunity to have a few hours in the man cave AKA The Room of Gloom.

The kitchen roll and brown coloured DIY filler mix that I had done before Christmas have continued to dry and the brown has lighten in the process of drying which is good.

As I am going to try using an epoxy liquid to create the river, the river bed and sides need to be 'water tight'. The DIY filler is not going to be that so I have coated the river bed and sides with two coats of acrylic household varnish. This should hopefully keep the resin in where it should be and not dripping down from the bottom of the baseboard. How successful this will be is questionable. As a youngster a group of us built a boat out of odds and ends and its maiden voyage saw it becoming a submarine - enough said! Anyway the sheen on the plaster indicates that the first coat of varnish sealed the DIY filler and the second coat now sits on top of that giving a sealed surface.  

I also managed to start doing some work on the area around the canal wharf. Most of the track will be set into the surface which will most probably be some form of cobbles. To do this I need a sub-base to support the cobbles and this is 2mm mounting card cut to fit around the outsides of the track and helpfully is level with the sleepers of the track.

I have also started constructing the ground formation in the corner of the layout. It may all look a bit mis-matched at the moment but it should, if my calculations are right, work! Then again it may not!