The hills are alive ...

Pictures being worth a thousand words this should tell you pretty much all you need to know about what I've been up to the last couple of days. What it won't say is how close to disaster the whole thing came. I have a bit of a love hate relationship with backscenes. I prefer to paint them, it gives a more coherent look having all parts of the layout made by the same hands but there's ever present possibility of unintended cock up snookering the whole show. At least the other difficult bits can be assembled as discrete units away from the trainset, only being applied if all is well. Backscenes are a bit too 'do or die' to allow for a happily relaxed approach.

Busy, busy, busy

Sunday; rush of blood to the head or a rare bout of enhanced work ethic and the backscene has had its unsatisfactory shade of blue covered up with two coats of white emulsion that will act as an undercoat for a warm cloudless cobalt blue sky. I have a thing about clouds on backscenes, they rarely convince partly because not everybody is a Constable and  partly because backscenes allow one to see a greater sweep of sky than real life and even with clouds well spaced out the backscene appears to have too many. The thirty foot sweep of sky backing onto Morfa would only exacerbate this problem. I've also completed all the fascia and finished painting it grey. Tidied up the layout a treat.