Got tired of my tight radius, narrow gauge layout, so I went hunting and found a raised layout. Found the layout, unpainted online for a super cheap price. Spent about a week weatherproofing the thing as best I could with quality outdoor paint, both top and bottom of the tables is painted with several coats. I do plan to use rolled roofing to create a waterproof top cover as soon as funds allow(not cheap). While this was going on, I traded my Regner live steam Stainz locomotive for an Aster Virginia & Truckee Reno. I then found and bought a vintage Bing for Bassett Lowke GWR Titley court thats been reboilered from a Smithies type to a JVR Type C with 3 fire tubes. A common boiler used on later Aster models due to ease of construction. Both are alcohol fired, so no issues when I want to steam in cold winter weather. I plan to have one side of the layout with a western USA theme, and the other will have the feel of the GWR in the UK. If our local steam group had dual gauge on the portable layout(its pvt owned) I would have gone down to O gauge in the garden on the new layout as there is a huge selection of vintage O gauge UK stuff, where as Gauge 1 is a bit harder and much more expensive for UK items. To build up a vintage 3-4 car passenger train, it will cost me nearly what the locomotive did. Finding UK buildings are harder as well, but I have a few leads. I do plan to explore UK vintage O gauge with live steam and clockwork sometime soon again. Need to find another Bassett Lowke that is electric driven, so I can convert it to onboard battery for times I dont wish to run steam. I have a Kalamazoo 4-4-0 and a Bachmann 4-6-0 for the USA theme. Mike the Aspie
