Woodwork
As mentioned earlier I'd already built some of the module frames for the layout. I couldn't finish the last one until I'd worked out where the water was going to be along the front of the third board (at the left-hand end of the layout) but that's now settled. I notched the front beam over the weekend to allow for the beach and estuary, and assembled the frame on Saturday.
This means I'm now at the fun woodwork stage. I've done all the painstaking 'ensure these things are square and level' framing, and now I can just have at the plywood decks with a power jigsaw to create the different levels and ramps. Whee!
By the way, I'm not claiming that things are actually square and level, but I think it's pretty close. Not bad considering the last time I did any serious woodworking was in the very excellent Mr. Smith's craft club at King Edward VII Lower School, in Sheffield. Sadly, the building we used to hang around in after school hours has now gone, along with the rest of the '60s Lower School buildings to be replaced with a PFI-funded modern creation. It's not that the old buildings were nice (they were pretty grotty) but they were ours in some way that the new building is not.
(There's also a much more direct way ownership has been lost - the privately funded buildings are rented to the school, and they have to pay to be able to run after-school activities, or they get turfed out at hometime. Depressing.)
Woodwork at school in a proper workshop has made me pine (ha!) for a proper workbench, with a drill press and a decent vice. In the meantime, I bought a $20 workmate clone, which is exactly worth the money I paid for it... It's OK for sawing and drilling, but it isn't stable enough to hold a workpiece in order to plane it or shape it with a rasp. I have some nice plans somewhere for a workbench built from 2x2 timber and a solid-core door - a future project perhaps?
Anyway, you can see how it's going from the pictures - the first module has had its plywood deck shaped and attached. When it's all dry tomorrow I'll put some supports in for the ramp between the depot and Gokurakuji station.