Back in May and June 2020, lockdown restrictions gave me time to work on the extension, which at that point had only reached as far as the second bridge. The next step (for both phases 2 and 3) of the extension involved making holes including one for gaining access to the shed for stock storage.
The making of the holes (as recorded in a virtual meet-up post at the time) took place on 9 May:
Having made the holes, I began to lay the trackbed (a mix of decking a larch planks), whilst also working on a semi-covered area alongside the shed, through which the mainline passed. While this would be a general storage area, the roof created what would become for the next year a temporary covered steam-up area (which is still occasionally used, although it’s not ideal, sited on the ‘main line’). The roof is not yet fixed here on 23 May:
By 2 June I was laying track, and by 3 June this reached into the shed.
Fortunately the weather remained fine, because it wasn’t until 20 June that I actually got the shed door (for trains) fixed in place!
In July I shot a driver’s eye video of the line starting an ending from inside the shed, for a virtual meet-up. This is the second attempt (the previous one, a couple of days earlier, having been pretty much unwatchable!)
Inside the shed, the plan was to create a shelf-based cassette system for train storage. But I found that the capacity for simply having one train coupled up and ready to go was so transformative, the motivation to actually build the shelves diminished, and it took me another year to get round to this…
