Wow!

And here she is, fitted with a pair of liliput bogies I had ready for her (the yellow axleboxes on one bogie will be removed). A beauty! Wow!

Lead-ing the way

Much work recently has been focussed on my O-14 emerging layout here: http://ohfourteen.blogspot.com/

But that doesn't mean that there isn't thought going into 009 either.

Firstly I have to report the arrival of some self adhesive lead strip (used to create fake stained glass windows) which is cheap, comes on long rolls and at either 4 or 6mm wide is perfect for adding weight to wagons/carriages etc.  Being self adhesive there is no work involved at all.

The other news is that today my wife reports the arrival of my latest acquisition, courtesy of the talented hands of Rob Waller (Boston Largs works) - I can't wait to get back from France to check it out.  It will need a few details like the mesh floors and vac pipes (oh and bogies) adding, but it is basically complete and as you can see from Rob's blogs, it looks the business. cool :-) http://bostonlargsworks.blogspot.com/2011/01/just-outshopped.html

Colin

Mystery solved

The bizarre mystery of the failure of 143 during expong has been solved. I took the motor out and it was fine. We looked at the valve gear/quartering and all looked fine. So dad took it all apart and what had happened was a bit of sticky ballast had got into the gears in such a way that it was not visible but was stopping the gears rotating. Frustrating, but ultimately now sorted. I'm confident that by the next exhibition RD will have 3 operational ngg16s in red, blue and black. Those plus the two funkeys, merddin, k1 and a further 16 (109) part built will form the motive power. I have yet to decide what to do with the smaller less reliable stock such as Upnor and Conwy castles. Doubts also remain about the performance of russell and lyd (2-6-2s) on my tight curves. I will however look to bend the ears of the experts building bron hebog to see how their models perform and whether some adjustments could be made to aid running. I will probably run Russell with the whhr heritage train and sell Gelert (as its chassis picks up on just the one set if wheels!) and lyd will be hard to resist in proper southern livery. (that's NOT a dig at the interesting and clever if not really accurate current br lined black livery by the way).