Tumbleweed time...

You've seen those old westerns with the deserted towns and the tumbleweed blowing down the deserted streets...
Well such is the state of my mind at the moment when it comes to developing this layout.
If you've seen some of the posts on my 4mm scale agonies blog you'll know that I can see in my minds eye just exactly what I want to put over on a model.
Lately, here that has just not been happening for me. I know what I want to put over in the model I just can't see how I want to put it over.
Mountain streams, Dinas junction station building, trees, mountains, slate built buildings. It's all there. I just can't see how these features relate to each other.
To me that is of paramount inportance. I haven't done anything to my P4 layout in months but my enthusiasm for this layout remains undiminished because I can see how every inch of the layout will look when finished. Ergo, it must be the same for this project.
In the meantime I'm reading and absorbing lots of material on all aspects of the layout. I found a fascinating piece in an old issue of the Review last night "Feldbahn Theatre" it was called. The layout was 1:22.5 scale, circular, about 3' in diameter. There was a lot of rumblings about smoke generators and such like. But the overall presentation had things that made me think. The lighting, the seamless semicircular backscene. Who knows where that article will lead me, if anywhere.
I've also taken some inspiration from Neil Rushbys' circular 009 layout. I like the way it looks. It's almost, but not quite, sort of like, almost what I'm thinking of. It nags at my brain in a way that other layouts don't.
So nothing much happenning but its not for want of trying...

The mystery baseboard

I've posted this picture on my 4mmscale agonies blog and I thought I'd post it here for devilment...

It's a piece of wood some 5' long by 1' at its deepest point, that has been languishing unnoticed in my garage for several years now. Coming in from a 15 mile run the other day I saw it and was struck by the shape. Initially I thought the curved edge looked like a river bank. It could just as easily be a rocky fast flowing North Wales river as it could be a slow silted up East Lincolnshire river mouth. Like I say just posted for devilment it would be a pity not to incorporate those curves on a layout somewhere...

Mail Call

Yesterday on returning home from work my first mailing from the 009 society had arrived.
It's interesting to see the difference in society introductory mailings. The EM Gauge society sends a huge wodge of papers in its manual and a CDRom as well. The Scalefour society sends a nice thick folder of papers too.
The 009 is much lighter. Not that that is a bad thing at all. Just a magazine and a letter of introduction and a couple of pages of rules.
The big surprize though was a free Colin Ashby wagon kit! I wasn't expecting that at all. Unfortunately the wheels snapped off at the axles on the wheels and and one wheel and both axles punched their way out of the envelope and got lost in transit on my kit. But that's not an issue, send me replacement and the same would probably happen. I have plenty of Microtrains wheels that I will standardize on for my layout anyway. But I was really impressed with that little extra in the mailing.
So I now consider myself a 009 modeller and a happy one at that.