Those happy few, that band of brothers (and sisters) who have seen Empire Mills in action will not have seen the projects' most shy and retiring inhabitant, the class 52 western hydraulic no 1067, Western Druid. The reason for this was simple; the line contoller (aka Gareth) had regretfully withdrawn it from the 1st XV (well 1st IV) due to antisocial tendencies: to whit pulling wagons off the rails on corners.

1067's history has been, it has to be admitted, rather problematic. One of messers Heljan's creations, it seemed that it would be a straightforward conversion to EM gauge, thanks to Ultrascale drop in wheel sets. After the obligatory wait of several months for the wheel sets to arrive, it was a work of minutes to lift out the old sets, drop in the new ones and adjust the pickups - simples.

It was then on to the dcc sound chip. This involed cutting a large hole in the plastic moulding that is fitted beneath diecast chassis for the speaker. Again not a problem, but feeding the speaker wiring through the diecast frame required taking the motor out. When the motor went back it the sound worked fine but the loco didn't. Instead, it moved in arthritic jerks and couldn't pull anything. Much head scratching then followed until eventually it was discovered that the motor has a right way and a wrong way round. With the motor turned round it ran well and sounded lovely.

Then the next heartache was over the extra details Heljan included. For reasons that defy all understanding and comprehension it seems the Heljan have perfected a plastic that is impervious to solvents and cannot be gripped by superglue or impact adhesives which made fitting of the little plastic pipes difficult, a task made much harder by the fact that the holes in which they were supposed to fit being too small or the wrong shape... After much swearing white metal ones were substituted.

Then came the brake gear saga.

Hejan have produced some beautiful brake gear mouldings, unfortunately from the same glue repelling material as the buffer beam detail, and with the same attention to getting a reasonably easy push fit. After much more swearing and copious refitting of brake parts that had catapulted themselves out of their fitting points such was the pressure exerted on them once pushed into the location sockets, the brake gear was finally in place only for it to be proven beyond doubt that the brake gear prevented the bogies form turning AT ALL. Now Empire Mills is reasonably curve free, or at least has very gentle curves but even these defeated the Western, and as for trying to persuade it to get round the curves in Hope under Dinmore without chucking itself into the cess.... So the brake gear was removed with some force and cast unto the darkness.

So what next? Well I'm toying with trying the Brassmasters bits to see if brake gear and corners can be made compatible and the AJ coupling will be moved from the buffer beam to the bogies via a slot in the buffer beam which should allow the bogies to swing and the coupling to cause less chaos with the rest of the rolling stock. I'll keep you posted!