Where did the week go?

No railway club on Wednesday, no rehearsal on Thursday, so what happened to the week? Not a lot really, apart from work I seem to have slept through most of it.

Anyway, Sunday again and I seem to have missed a few days- though I did get over to Hucknall to the model shop yesterday. Bought some of the new Oxford cars and cleaned them out of Peco 5-plank wagon kits again.

i can recommend them- very friedly and helpful. TOTAL N-GAUGE, Hucknall. They advertise in the Toddler.

Introducing Lil

Jersey Lily

This is Jersey Lily- a Great Central Atlantic 4-4-2. Professionally built, it came from the estate of a deceased member of Lincoln Model Railway Club. Lily is temperamental. The connecting rods seem not to have enough to hold them in position. She may have to be sent away for fettling, though I don't quite know how.

Rather a beautiful thing, unfortunately she is the wrong colour. The lettering is post-1928, when the prototypes were painted black with red lining. Still, she looks good.

Productive Tuesday

Good day today for modelling, just like yesterday wasn't. The whole of Monday seemed to be taken up with those eleven exam papers- as they were practice ones I ended up writing the correct answers on the papers, and adding in other answers the students could have thought of. Definitely a mistake as it took me almost as long to mark each one as it took them to do the exam.

Still, one of them actually thanked me today- that is a rarity these days.

I've had the North end of "Farndon Road"'s fiddle yard upside down on top of my test track since last wednesday, to finish wiring in the control panel. All I managed over the weekend was to get the power supply from the call-on system to the panel (eleven soldered joints) and find out why the points wouldn't throw last wednesday- that turned out to be a duff lead. This evening I managed to wire in the point controls for the entry points (28 soldered joints) so I'm feeling a bit more relaxed about finishing the wiring in time for the layout's first show.

Not only that but I've got my LNER J25 and second J27 finished ready for use on Parnhams. Not only that but the crew in the J27 cab didn't have to be chased all round the cab before sticking - AND they stuck where I wanted them to. Impressive!

Weekend wonders

Saturday morning spent as predicted at Whatton. The layout didn't take as much wiring as needed, except that a silly fault needed a silly solution to make it work- wiring a switch into the return rather than the feed- someone will have an interesting time when they find it after Trev sells the layout.

It was also Bingham Model railway Club's exhibition, at Whatton. We walked over to the hall and had a look round. Only one member's layout- the club layouts were all destroyed in a fire a few months ago- but a good selection of privately owned layouts, most of which I've not seen before. Club chairman seemed surprised that Trev already has an invite to Warley this year with the new layout "Parnhams".

Got home to find a formal invite to exhibit at Taunton Rail-ex in October 2010. This will be an outing for "Parnhams" as "Farndon Road" can't travel that distance for another three years.

Happy Friday

Another week of work over and a long weekend to follow. A group of exam papers to mark, and going to Trev's tomorrow to help him get his old layout ready for sale. I'll take his J11 (6009) across with me, and no doubt pick up another loco for doing.


6009 in all its glory.