Slow progress on the train set

Well, everyone has expressed wanting to see how things are coming on. It's slow, but it is getting there. Some people may have already seen some of the pictures before.

I'm currently working on a beautiful church, I just have a few more additions and it will be complete. I think this has been my favourite build so far. At the back, you can see the war memorial I made a few weeks ago, and the terraced houses that will eventually make their way back to the table in the other room. I still have the chimneys to finish on the one.

The framework of the table is done on one side of the room, and hubby has been figuring out the electrics for the buildings along the High Street. Everything is still a mess, but it's a work in progress and beginning to come together. 

This is the far end where the first panel, the High Street one, is going to  be.  The roll, you can see, is a sky and tree backdrop that will go along the back as well as the left side. Hubby has some wiring tidying up to do but has a couple of switches under the table on one of the cross beams, near the front.

This will be the front of that first panel, the High Street of my little town, St. William  Once it is put in position, I'll glue the remaining buildings into place. Some have been glued, but as hubby needed to lift those he was putting lighting in, some aren't.

For now, it is just sitting down the other end of the table, out of the way. It looks so small just sitting there on part of the frame. Once it is in its proper place, I will have 2 rows of terraced houses that will sit behind the houses and pub at the right, on some kind of a step up, to add depth. They are only half as deep so as so be used as a background to the main aspects of the layout.

Here you can see a semi-aerial view. The whole are needs re-vacuuming (I have a hand held) as it seems to attract dust and "bits". The envelope, at the right, contains my Belisha beacons for the 2 zebra crossings, and the electrical stuff to make them flash on and off, like the real thing.

This weekend, we are hoping to get this panel set in its correct place, and then put the other bare panels in place so that I can start figuring out the first track route, and bring in the other dioramas-in-progress and planning where they will all go in the bigger scheme of things.

I have a "stone" farmhouse and farmworker's cottage built, and the barn to go with it, is ordered. I now have some "stone" walls that will feature around the farmyard and have been working on the "cobblestone" yard area. The greenhouse and some other buildings will probably be near the worker's cottage, and I have a cornfield to "plant". A previous attempt to do that resulted in disaster, so hopefully this time, I'll do better.

The plan for Mark's motel, KFC and Travel Center, is for it to be at the back of the other wall, and have  the track on the opposite side of the road, like we see it locally, here, a lot of times.

The KFC will be to the left of the motel diner. At KFC, I have a lady taking orders and a couple of people in line. In the diner, I have people sitting in booths and lining up at the register to either pay or be seated, plus a  couple of other people walking around inside. 

The office is between the main motel rooms and the diner, and - again - I've tried to make it look like there's something going on there.

I still have a lot of work to do on this diorama though. The parking spots and road to mark, and some kind of verge, bushes or wall to divide the road from the motel. I haven't decided which, yet.

There are people coming and going at the motel and once I have the parking spots marked out, I'll get some cars out front and people by some of them. I'd also like a couple of people going up and down the stairs. All future plans.

There's a line at the pictures - it must be a Saturday matinee I guess - and someone headed into the tobacconists for his "nicotine fix".

I am enjoying building all the different pieces, and am impatient to have it all together ... but what I've done so far is probably less than 1/4 of what will eventually be how it ends up. 

Mark has some soldering to do on the turntable, and then I have to complete that, for his end. Once we then figure out where that will go, I'll build the engine houses that come off of it. I can't do those before the turntable, as they have to fit certain angles where the track comes off the circle.

Then, we also have to figure where some of the lines will run off to factories and yards in his industrial areas, and situate all the buildings that go there. His skid row end will also be down there. 

So, much is still far off in the future, but we plod on!