However there have been a few Facebook posts during the year nothing to update this blog with.
Kids' weekend sport and life in general getting in the way of anything significant this year, however I can report that in July while I was on holidays I built the frame for Matt's layout, and dropped in the foam baseboard.
Then it was a few months of coming up with a basic design and reason for existence of the railway. Matt settled on a quarry as the main reason for the layout.
So since the October school holidays we have been progressively layering foam down and cutting it into a basic shape for the mountain, tunnel and quarry.
Then on the weekend just gone I mixed up a test batch of "PK's Mud" (no more gaps filler, water, brown poster paint and vermiculite in no set recipe, basically does it 'look right with enough body to work into the cracks and spaces to fill?'). After a successful small first try, it was time for a whole lot more! As the weather on Sunday was hot but low humidity, being in the tin shed wasn't unbearable, and hopefully the heat would set the filler mix off quicker. So Matt and I spent about an hour or so mixing up and applying the Mud. He had fun as did I. It was kind of therapeutic in a way!
So for our first effort we ended up with what looks like a half decent mountain with tunnel and an adjacent quarry with most of the harsh angles and edges softened up and textured with the Mud. Far from finished but at least we have our main feature looking the way it should before additional detail goes down.
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| So this photo is the long shot of the mountain, tunnels and quarry. The town will be located in the foreground space. |
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| This is the left side view as seen from the front/town side |
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| This is the quarry side view also showing the tunnel 'canyon' |
