The edifice which will grace the top of Wales’s highest mountain is being assembled in a Deeside warehouse.

In true Ikea fashion, the frame of the new Snowdon visitor centre is a flat-pack design, and engineers are going through a dry run in the Corus factory, presumably to make sure there are no missing nuts and bolts or door hinges.

If it’s anything like grough’s attempts at flat-pack assembly, there will be a few choice words being uttered on Deeside and a fair bit of scratching of heads as incomprehensible diagrams are studied.

Hafod Eryri, as the new café – sorry, visitor centre – will be known, will be galvanised after disassembly and loaded in neat ten-ton chunks on to the Snowdon Mountain Railway for its journey to the summit.

Carillion, the company charged with erecting the new carbuncle, decided to have a dry run to sort out any potential problems in the dry comfort of the Deeside warehouse rather than finding out the bits don’t fit in an 80mph wind on the 1,085m-high summit of Yr Wyddfa.

The steel frame weighs 130 tons. Next step in the assembly practice is the fitting of windows and rollers shutters, to give it that authentic Moss Side look. Work on the summit site is due to restart on 26 March, after a break through the winter. Foundations will be laid ready for the flat-pack sections to arrive by train.

There’s blog detailing the demolition of the old concrete bunker which formerly marked the highest spot in England and Wales, along with plenty of pics of the new structure.