Just to show I haven't spent my entire quota of hobby time of late up on my soap box, here are a couple of real work-in-progress photos. Firstly, ballasting trials. Ballasting is right up there with wiring and cleaning the kludgie when it comes to fun things to do, I'm afraid - not something I relish even when things go right. And things haven't gone right...
Firstly, when I'd got everything sorted out and ballast spread out on the line my last remaining syringe disintegrated. Secondly, when I eventually secured a couple of eye-droppers from Boots (used to apply the dilute woodworking adhesive to the ballast) and got going I found I didn't like any of the ballast samples I'd got. Previous layouts had been done using a nice silvery sand that I'd got from who knows where in the dim and distant past. As this ran out some time ago I need to find a commercial product I can live with. Experiments are continuing in little patches on the hidden parts of the layout - hence the odd effect in the photo. 25275, by the way, is the standard Bachmann item - renumbered, chipped and fitted with Express Models lights, but otherwise unaltered.
The other job in hand at the moment is fitting DCC & sound to the Bachmann Super Voyager, using an ESU LokSound 2 sound decoder. I'm still working on this - it's not the decoder fitting that takes time, but taking the pesky photos for the step-by-step guide.