October Update

Good news Bendigo A box survived the move! bad news no work has been done on the layout since the move, but this will change very soon.  Well the house move went very well nothing was broken which is always nice.  Now that the whole house is nearly all painted i can start to think about doing some work on the layout. First thing is i plan to build a new modelling desk in the spare room. This should be alot better than the old round table i was using. I will post about this new desk soon, as its not yet built but have planed it in my head.  The one thing about painting a house is that it gives you lots of thinking time.  Here are some changes that i will be making to make the layout better.

1. I have removed the curved backdrop.  I have done this for two reasons, i need better access to the back for landscaping the foam. Should have shape the foam before gluing down. The other is ive change the way the layout will be built in the shed. The curved back drop will be apart of the internal frame work of the shed. More on that some other day.

2. Etching, the cost of etching is very high so im going to give it a try myself. One problem using a etching company is that they need a minimum size of a A4 sheet. So when testing parts you have to fill up a whole sheet first with parts to test. This is were i have lost a lot of time designing parts to make a full sheet.  About half the parts i was going to etch that need etching to be spot on, im now going to get 3D printed. This will be easier to build these bits as i will not need to worry about etching tolerances and fold lines etc.  The parts i will etch myself are going to be the sleeper plates.  I will post later on DIY etching. It is a long progress and will take a few goes to get right.

3. I have change the layout width from 700mm to 800mm. This will hopefully help balance the layout. I want to get the scenery to track ratio right!

4. I have done a draft plan of the whole layout in the shed with mainly the bench work shape and walkway widths done. I have also worked out the locations of the stations, yards and infrastructure

Sorry that progress has been slow but hopefully things will start to pick now. Im hoping track work is only just around the corner.