Sometimes just flicking through the pictures taken during projects is a useful little reminder of how things have gone, and a prompt for going. The image above is of Shelfie4 in March 23. It’s a key picture, almost a milestone in the project, this is around when the water ‘worked’, really popping into life with the colours and reflectivity.

That image at the header takes me back to the start of the project, and pinging messages backwards and forwards across a hundred miles or so with James Hilton and thousands of miles with Chris Mears, about how it might look and operate in a plausible and prototypical manner. Part of that was moving stuff around on the footprint and taking pictures. Monochromatic images help with that as I’m not distracted by color, the grey tones just neutralising elements to the core components.

So what’s the motivation today, just looking and seeing the progress really. I’ve been speaking to a friend who’s just getting his layout together for a show, taking it as work in progress. What was interesting was listening as he said this was probably his first whole solo effort. Pretty much ch every other layout project he’d worked on has been a collaborative effort in one way or another.

And that got me thinking that all the Shelfie’s 1,2,3 and 4, and Albion Yard* have been solo builds. And that’s quite a motivating thought, ‘I did that, and can do it again’.

I don’t know what I’m going to do today, on a walk back from the stables today I came across the view above. What was interesting was the foreground hedgerow, it’s a farm track so is maintained to their own needs. This is what a hedgerow probably would have looked like along a rural road before faster ‘industrial’ methods were introduced to look after farmland. Plenty to note n the image on how the foliage has developed and interacts with each other. So just a simple five minute pause observing helps the thought and imagination process for the next one!

I’m happy with that!

*Honourable mention for Chris Nevard for supplying the backscene image for Albion Yard.