Adding some wagon loads and a guard ...

 For my cattle van I put a couple of old Schleich cows onto a base and then put that in the cattle van; can only just see the cows through the gaps in the van.

 Next up were some removable wagon loads, I made up some bases from plasticard and scribed them,

 then painted them a light grey and glued on various items barrels, boxes etc to give me some loads I can now swap out of my wagons ...

 

Lastly I made up a narrow base of card painted it as close as possible to the guards van grey and stuck on a guard (Bachmann figure), the guard on his base can removed if desired

New platform surfaces...

For  my in-door garage layout, the platforms surfaces done using Metcalfe OO scale paving  had deteriorated over the damp winter so I've replaced them with some vinyl self-adhesive tiles from Wilkinsons.

 They look much better now and are more robust to cope with the environment of the garage.

The grass is growing .....

A couple of weeks ago finally decided on what to do with the centre of the garden - have a sort of wild flower 'meadow' instead of just grass.

I put in plenty of grass seed and two boxes of wild meadow mixture as well, now we have some grass coming through in patches - obviously didn't quite get the depth of seed uniform - still it's a start

Checking running of rolling stock ....

Had some nice weather yesterday, so popped out and ran a small train of representative rolling stock to check clearances and negotiation of curves etc. Everything went Ok much to my delight.

Some photos of the train in various parts of garden layout.....

Station !

A final push yesterday got the station area ballasted, track laid and the station with associated buildings in place. Nice to have the garden railway back in place.

 View of station, showing siding ...

 Gangers check the newly laid track ....

 View showing the lineside hut and water tower...

Diesel (battery powered) approaches the station area...

I had the battery diesel running round for a while - picked up some areas of uneven track, which required a jiggle of the ballast to correct. Plenty left to to do......

Buildings for the station area....

The main station, this will sit on some offcuts of decking, needs a clean and a few repairs but ready for use.

I'll use a small building as a line-side hut, need to stick on one of the side panels which has come loose and give the roof a re-paint.

a few checks .....

Took advantage of the sunny weather yesterday to do a few bits and bobs

firstly engineers check the clearances in the station approach from the signal box ...

 engineers find the track somewhat off-centre of in rockery cutting...

 a quick visit by the track gang (me) gets the track sitting centrally

 ---oXo---

After a rummage in the garage I got the the necessary bits of track out for the station area and laid them out to check alignment etc ...

not too bad - only about 3" out of alignment at the top end