While I’m excited by the thought of building Boxomise, I feel I should be disciplined and finish my Apadobe Mine layout first.

One outstanding job was to paint some American figures.

Meet the boys!

I used Phil Parker’s trick of gluing them to lolly sticks to hold them while painting them. It works well… but you have to eat an ice cream first. Oh, the things we have to do for our modelling 🙂

(As an aside, as I look at the photo I’ve just noticed the figure on the left seems to be wearing ‘Pilot’ style sunglasses. I didn’t notice that when I was painting him!)

The figures have been Araldited to the layout. Mine owner on the left, the two workers on the right. (Too late to add those sunglasses now!)

Another enjoyable job I’ve been doing over the last couple of weeks is to add some ‘clutter’ to the layout.

There’s a broken mine tub next to the Adobe building.

An old wooden barrel and some wooden buckets have been added too.

A collection of mining tools is propped up against the rock face.

Finally, I’ve added a couple of tools next to the mine entrance.

I didn’t want to add too much clutter, it’s a small layout and I wanted to keep a sense of ‘space’.

There is one school of thought that says shunting puzzles shouldn’t have any scenery at all because scenery detracts from the purity of the shunting operations

🙂

Personally, I didn’t want a ‘bare board’. I’m hoping the scenery, the figures and a little bit of clutter will add some interest and still let me enjoy solving the shunting puzzles.

Next, I need to finish the rolling stock.