Getting some colour down on the baseboards and track is my current priority. After extensive testing and fault fixing (especially with the SEEP point motors) I've been looking at out-of-the-box-track on plain cork for a long time.

I'm now spraying the track with Tamiya 'dark earth', and once this is dry following it up by painting the rail sides a rust colour. I'm not 100% happy with the 'rust' colour at the moment (Humbrol No 70 straight from the tin), but some further weathering may improve it. Once completed ballasting will be the next stage. Whilst looking into ballast options I've found finely ground coffee has a really good texture for '00' scale ballast, but it's colour is a problem. I've tried bleaching it to lighten it but this doesn't work. Painting is another option I could look at, but even if this fails I'm going to try and use coffee topped with 'proper' model ballast to make the process more economical.

I found from experience it's always worth spraying onto scrap newspaper for the first few seconds of each session, as the initial output from the aerosol results in big 'blobs' of paint before the spray becomes finer. As soon as each point is sprayed thinners are spread along the rail tops with a cotton bud, then scraped off with a second cotton bud soaked in thinners.

Next steps will be to start the buildings and scenery proper. The layout has a fiddle yard which is 'off scene' and I'm planning to download the scalescenes bridge/retaining wall kit to seperate this. Most other buildings will be scratchbuilt and rather generic, not following any particular prototype or railway company's style. With luck I hope to be able to fit a small pub in one corner as part of an end-of-a-street scene, so the layout will not be 'all railway'.
Hopefully it won't be too long before I can update this web site with photos and a short description of progress...