A certain person suggested trying again and looking for something else I found my electrical bits box, a Ferrero Roche box left over from last Christmas. I would like to point out that my wife was the owner, not me, but I bought them with an eye on the box, a nice flat 12" by 6" ish container.
So here we are, the bottom of the box forms the scenic area, whilst the lid forms an oversize 'sector cassette' with room to store spare wagons, loads etc so they don't get in the way of the sliding action. The plastic container makes it easy to slide the two parts along each other. The outer rails on the scenic section have tabs on them to stop overslide and align the tracks accurately. I still need to wire everything together electrically but track feeds are in place.
The trackbed is foamcore, raised on lengths of 7mm stripwood recovered from the streets after bonfire night.

A close-up of the scenic section, track was first sprayed with red oxide car primer, follwed by a light coat of matt black, then a dust of grey primer aimed at the sleepers:

A close up of the 'sector cassette', the track area was sprayed matt black for neatness, I must touch the edges in....:

Jumping many steps, the track is now ballasted and the area around landscaped, scenically treated and grass 'grown'. The grass is my usual method of hanging basket liner and IMHO ooks very effective in this scale:

The star of the show, and the reason I was convinced to build the layout:

Just in case anyone was unsure of the size of the layout:

The unfilled space at the back of the layout is due to gain some removable buildings, at present I am unsure what the setting will be, industrial or perhaps an estate railway in the 1960s...
So now we know why the Ambasador serves Ferrero Roche*... to build micro layouts in the boxes...!!
Colin
*for the younger readers, I suggest you look up old Ferrero Roche adverts on YouTube
