Upgrading a train set

A weekend visiting family usually means a break from railway modelling. However this time my wife told me to pack my tools! Our 10-year old nephew wanted some scenery on his train set, so it turned out to be three days of modelling...

A while back his Mum had been looking for somewhere to put the railway, including the loft which wasn't suitable, so I sketched an idea for a baseboard that folded down from his bedroom wall. It turns out my sister in law is an excellent carpenter, so next time we visited things were up and running. My nephew has since built some downloaded card models, and laid some roads. Now he'd also been given some buildings and scenic items, plus some extra track.

My first job was to repair a broken lead from the wall-wart transformer to the controller, so out came the soldering iron. Then came the track; a long siding ended in a point and two short spurs, which was not very practical. I suggested a couple of alternative options, my nephew chose both, so we were off to the local model shop to buy another point. As it involved a kick-back siding we got some wire and a switch, so it could be fed from the adjacent track. Also the station needed a platform on a curve, so a Metcalf kit was purchased too.

With the sidings laid and wired, the controllers were screwed down too, then we added some hills in the front corners with some polystyrene and PVA soaked newspaper. The next day we painted them green and added scatter. He'd been given some nylon "static" grass but didn't know what it was for, fortunately I'd brought my static grass applicator, so we added plenty of that too. The platforms took a surprisingly long time over a couple of evenings, the awkward shape didn't help, but the kit is flexible enough to be built to almost any shape.

There remains of course plenty of things that can be added: fences, trees, bushes, backscenes, more buildings, figures, details, etc. That grey circle is to become a pond. However the trainset has progressed to a model railway, and should provide plenty of fun to it's owner. Now my son is asking when we can start building his new trainset...