Parallel and almost next to the access road to the Santa Caterina station there is a ditch which is 2.3cm. wide (i.e. approx. 2m.) which comes from the bottom of the hill. It is only 5mm. deep as I have removed only the cork, and whilst waiting for water, I have coloured the bottom blue and the sides green. Before filling the joint between ditch and road I will decide to close the ditch with walls or simply leave it framed by the classic weeds to be found in the countryside. Besides the three simple portals I created a small stone bridge which was necessary in order to get to the working area, the water cistern and the locomotive shed.

In the space I purposely left on the inside of the hinged panel and to the left of the synoptic I have created a small control panel which has five switches, which have very briefly the following functions:
- traffic control :manual/automatic (in automatic mode the traffic will be completely programmed and controlled by a PC)
electrical current : analogic/digital (even if all the loco will be digitalised there will still be an analogic option)
- signal of the 1st track for the station exit (I haven't yet decided how this will work)
- signal of the 2nd track for the station exit (I haven't yet decided how this will work)
- lighting: day/night (with night.time lighting, besides the lamp-posts and the inside of the buildings, the present white light will be substituted with a diffused blue light which will be positioned at the extreme right os the background)

(see electrical diagram in a Word document)

To avoid having all the wires that come out from the switches visible, I have positioned a curtain in black rubber cut and hung on to a simple curtain rod (similar to those sprung rods used for window curtains) on the inside of the cupboard. When the hinged flap is closed, the two control panels are adjacent and the switches and the plexiglass of the synoptic panel hit against the rubber, which given its thinness is pushed back into the available space.

Taking advantage of a slight bout of flu which kept me confined to the house I decided to do a job which I had been putting off for too long. The sleepers were obviously all alike and therefore, armed with a brush and a dark brown paint which I thought satisfactory, I passed a fair amount of time painting them all. There aren't all that many but repeating the same action for 934 (nine hundred and thirty four) times wasn't particularly entertaining. Casually mixing between one sleeper and another I coloured them with a very dark, almost black shade but then, once finished and with the paint dry, the final effect was less than I had hoped for (in the photos the effect is even less pronounced). The only thing that I find satisfactory is that looking at the result from close up, there isn't one sleeper which is the same as the others. I think that it is useless to add that the drawing pins used for the temporary fixing were removed at the time when the gravel was laid.

Some months ago during the traditional Christmas dinner of the club I bought a few hand made objects off a friend of mine – a certain Maurizio Pavan, whose fame as a modeller goes well beyond the provincial boundaries. These objects, a water dispenser and two line signals for the exit from the station, I would have had to insert when the model had arrived at a certain level of development. Even if I have no plans to do so, the arm of the dispenser can be motor driven, but the connections for the line signals to the control box will be done as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the position of the objects is not perfectly authentic as far as regards the severe railway laws on the subject, but, quite sincerely, I have to say that they look great where they are.

In March i participated in an auction on E-Bay. Someone was selling an Italian level crossing made by CLM. My maximum offer was €52.50 but the lot went for a staggering €91.00! And to think that I thought to have bid too high! Be that as it may, it seemed that the only viable solution was Ninive's article no. 13H which is sold for €33.00. An e-mail order was sent to Mr Claudio and the metal kit arrived after a few days. Painting and mounting, even for one such as me who does not excel in manual ability on small objects, was not a problem. The present position is not definitive even if an eventual move will be only a case of a few millimetres.