Over the years, three house moves later and three rebuilds later, I have learnt a whole heap more about modelling and how to make it a lot better and now that we are in our forever home..... Well, as someone once said, "I’m b a c k", and the fettlers are working on the New layout even as you read this. Things are happening. This version of the M&V Rr brings us to the present, so I thought I had better give an update on how my 3+ decades project of an N Gauge layout is progressing.
This version in 2024, of the Mountain and Valley Railroad is still modelled on a fictitious sawmill/village called Fern Gully in a fictitious valley south of Kiama, south of Wollongong NSW, Australia, set in the 1901 ~ 1965 era. It’s a Shelf Layout on an 80cm X 250cm baseboard.
I have needed to go down to a shelf layout as our forever home is a small 55+ two-bedroom unit. It will not be an overnight re-awakening, as looking after the love of my life, my wife Joy, who is in remission with liver cancer from 2012 and who now has dementia in 2024, is my prime concern, but this time it will be finished if a layout can ever be said to be finished. But, I have got off line [pun] so back to how the build is going on. Engines do run around the rails, but being older types I think that I will have to get a couple of newer ones as the motors will be of better and stronger make than my old 1993 Steam Tank engine and my Diesel Loco, I think I have printed all of the houses needed for the village of Fern Gully.