April has been quite a quiet month for us in terms of modelling with family holidays and admin tasks soaking up much of the available time outside of the day job.

However, those who've been following progress of our RailWorks add-ons on the blog have seen a few updates sneaking out about the texturing of the 102t tanker and some of the other things we've been working on. There's also been the chance for a bit of audience participation to help shape the contents of the stock packs that are grinding their way ever forward.

Seeing that everyone else seems to be plugging it at the moment we thought we'd better mention we have a Facebook group too! If you haven't popped over and joined up feel free to click here or use the link towards the bottom of this page. We do feed in from the blog so it's an easy way of checking out what's going on without visiting loads of sites as the updates come straight to your home page.

As most of our updates and work in progress news from week to week goes onto the blog and major announcements appearing here on the website we thought it might be an idea just to give a quick update at the end of each month.

For those who've not been following progress of our RailWorks add-ons on the blog we've added renders of the shapes of the three main variants of the VDA van to the future product information page. Although two are similar we thought it worthwhile to produce all the variants while we were at it and will leave you to try and spot the differences, naturally the FAT13 suspension fitted vans are easy to spot!

In other news the 102T bogie tank wagon is now fully unwrapped and texturing has begun along with good progress on the accompanying scenario.

After about a month of hinting and grumbling it's finally time to unveil the first three releases as part of Project East Coast, our ambitious project to provide prototype stock to fully bring the RailWorks Newcastle to York route to life.

This set of releases will comprise two Stock Packs and a Maxi Pack:

The first pack will contain a 102T Class A Bogie Tank Wagon depicting what became the basic standard design developed by Metro-Cammell in the late 1960s.

The second pack will contain what could be considered the last incarnation of the standard goods van, British Railways 45T Van known by TOPS as the VDA.

The Maxi Pack is a Motorail themed pack featuring the unique Newton Chambers double deck car carriers along with standard GUVs equipped for Motorail use and supporting rolling stock to create prototypical trains.

For more information about the products and some insight into their progress take a look at the Future Products page. The images below illustrate either the actual models or photographs to illustrate the rolling stock until we're ready to show the actual shape.

Have you noticed the link in the menu bar to our blog?

Only the really important release and product information will appear on the website, for frequent peaks at the progress of our products and possibly other insights into what's going on the blog is the place to be.

If you haven't done so already you may want to take a look and either add it to your favourites, subscribe to an RSS feed or even follow it if you're a blogger.

Just to make things a touch easier here's another link to the blog.

With the announcement of the first releases for RailWorks as part of Project East Coast just over the horizon we thought we'd take the time to tell you a little bit more about the way we plan to release things.

The general rule will be be that we will announce three packs at a time to be released over approximately the following three months. The set of releases will compose two Stock Packs and one Maxi Pack, in both cases the pack will not only contain the headline releases but if necessary other items of rolling stock that may be required to form trains typical of the Project East Coast period from 1974 to 1986. In all cases a couple of scenarios will be included to allow you to use the models straight out of the box, all items will be downloads only . There are fixed prices for Stock Packs and Maxi Packs to ensure you're only spending (what those of us over a certain age, consider to be) pocket money amounts!

Stock Packs: These will be composed of a single rolling stock item, with possibly important variants that are basically the same, in liveries typical of the Project East Coast period. Where appropriate we will include other items of rolling stock to enable you to run prototypical trains straight-away.

Maxi Packs: These will have more of a theme or a number of different headline stock items, again with any important variants and supplied in the right liveries for the period. Maxi Packs will always contain a number of other items to create prototypical formations.