This curve represents the sum total of progress in the past two weeks, all of which occurred in the last hour of daylight yesterday and despite several squalls of rain. The weekend before, of course, was ideal weather for tracklaying outside - mild and not too wet. Needless to say, I was inside fixing light fittings when I wasn’t out shopping. Even Saturday’s weather was better than yesterday, and indeed I was out in the garden - filling eight bags with fallen leaves.

Now I did say that the previous length of line might well be the last track laid until spring, so one can’t complain too much about even the least amount of progress. But c’mon! It’s immensely frustrating to waste the opportunity of what little favourable weather turns up. Added to which, my plan to spend the winter indoors kitbuilding has been temporarily stymied by the Cooper Craft slate wagon kit I ordered turning up without wheels.

You’ll note that this curve is not actually connected to the rest of the line yet. This is because I have to lay this bit, plus another three yards and the final curve, before I can see how big the gaps are going to be and whether the last yard of track will be sufficient to fill them in. This last piece will be the only one that requires cutting, and it needs to be absolutely precise, so I wanted to have the rest in place first. (A wiser man would probably have started here, rather than finished.)

I’ve trialled a slightly different trench technique on this stretch - only the locations of the bricks have been fully dug out, the rest of the trackbed merely has the turf removed. So instead of requiring a whole bag of gravel per yard, this section only required, er…two halves of a bag. Shome mishtake poshibly. At least I didn’t dig as much.

A word about track layout: doubtless you’ll be thinking, “This must be the most boring garden railway in the world. It’s all flat. No water features. No bridges. Not even some gentle curves. And no sidings!” Well no, there’s none of that. It isn’t entirely flat, as I’m sure we’ll discover when we try to run some proper locos on it. But the garden itself is mostly flat, and I lack the imagination to alter the landscape at this stage. As for sidings, I can’t see the point (arf) - yet. There’s only going to be one engine in steam because, well, there’s only me. It’s a ground level line, I don’t foresee buying a radio-controlled loco and thus I’m unlikely to want to carry out any shunting. Finally, SM-32 points are expensive and complicate the trackwork, thus violating the first principle round here - Let’s Not Go To Any Trouble. One train, round and round - that’s it. Maybe a little halt too, but absolutely nothing else is planned at this stage. That is my dream, and it’s an incredibly modest one as well. (Seriously, I’m fixated on the getting to the point where all the track joins up and it’s possible to run a loco without needing to reverse it.)

But when it’s taking you two weeks to lay three bits of curved track, there isn’t much point shooting for the moon.