Weather’s improved, and I may have to go and dig up some tree roots.  And Father’s day this weekend was graced by a phone call from Berlin, and socially distanced visits from the other two children on Sunday and Monday.

However, things continue to happen upstairs.  (Maxine joked that we achieve optimum social distancing  – one at the top of the house, one at the bottom of the garden!)

I trimmed a bit off my Rix overbridge to form one end of the scene and to hide the fiddle yard entrance.

The river/canal/whatever has been completed.  I bought some resin castings of sheet piled walling out in Stuttgart several years ago, as it looked good and “might come in useful.”  It has, and looks the part.

In the background, I have hacked about a DPM model transfer house, joining the walls to make a couple of longer, low relief structures.  These hide the over-long grass on the photo backscene, and leave the backscene buildings up the hill in the distance.  I started painting them, but dropped the paint pot.  Mess on floor and new internet order needed!

The final scene will look something like this.  One or two buildings may move a little, but it will look something like this.

So I really must start on that ballast.  No excuse till that paint arrives – together with some cobblestones, some road surface, bulrushes and a couple of trees.

And we have a name.  Roselle Park was no longer approproriate, and Earl’s Wood was the last layout, so I looked at my LV map, and came up with….

No idea why – it just has a nice swing to it.  The alternatives were ‘Interlaken’ to wind up our club Continental modellers, a Biblical ‘Nazareth’, or something very British.  But this will do.  In deepest New York State, it even has a lake to go with my layout….