Author

Robert Stewart

Date

15th November 2025

Reading Time

3 minutes

Preparations for The NEC for the weekend of 21^st and 22^nd November are well under way, frantic painting, glueing, cutting, tweaking and general fettling taking place in the Centenary room.

With a short 21 days from setup in Keen House to setup in the NEC the improvements were targetted at the big impact items that would stick out at a public show.  The long list of improvement tasks sits at around 30 items, 10 or so are being worked on quickly.  The principle jobs were renovating the grass hills on the higher level, these are showing their age across the layout and need some care and attention.  Weathering the viaduct is needed to help it sit in place more sympathetically for this part of Derbyshire.  There is a large seam on the higher level that needs to be covered, the intention is to install walls around the higher level fields with bushes and shrubbery to cover the join.  On the lower level a cattle dock, very typical of the kind of country station that Lacey Dale represents, is being put in place.  This is Ratio kit with around 100 pieces requiring a lot of fiddly glueing.  Sam, Danny, Michael, Rob and Nic have been working two or three days a week to bring Lacey Dale to life.

After the higher level background got a damn good hoovering the general shade improved from dust grey to a vibrant sunny green,  The hoovering left some bald patches and these were cleverly filled with a darker mix to show some variation of low vegetation on the distant hill.  Here you can see Danny using a blend of scatter from the supply boxes to cover the wet scenic cement applied by Michael.  The scenic cement is a special low viscosity glue that spreads and runs through any existing scenery, this makes it ideal for wide flat areas.

With the lower level not yet installed Nic has worked on weathering the viaduct to give an image of a brick structure in a wet Northern environment.  The major weathering is with powders, smoke and black to bring the tone down.  In the corners where earth and other muck can build up a simple mud brown powder is used to join the structure to the land.  A rust wash was a good match for the underlying brick colour and allowed for the recesses to be darkened.

The next step was to install the lower level which slots in under the high level boards.  It is bolted in and levelled ready for trains to run, the single slip point which gives access to the yard needs some looking at, the frog juicer being a bit sensitive.  Jon here is hoovering the leftovers after giving the track a thorough clean with a track rubber, one of the essential tasks in maintaining a reliable train set, our overlord watches on.

The setup has been fairly smooth and we look ready to go to impress the crowds in Birmingham.

All that remains is: checking how the JMRI scripting is behaving and that the higher level automation is good to go.  On the lower level the goods yard needs dressing with the bits and pieces that accumulate the yard and bring some life to the scene.  Finally the new cattle dock needs painting and installing at the front and centre of the layout.