Last Sunday the team met up to continue to work on Empire Mills.

The first job was to remove one of the lift out sections so it would be easier to work on the new loading bank area. To get the lift out section out, however, required lots of swearing, several broken knife blades, and a great deal of straining in order to break the seal of the glue and paint that had seeped down between the baseboard joints.

With the lift out section removed, Les was able to work on adjusting the position of the loading bank platform edge.

Meanwhile, Gareth and I were hard at work trying to ensure that the Edwardian china clay option that we are due to exhibit at the MRC's Alexandra Palace show in March had at least two working locos. In other words I was building a Dean Goods chassis and he was finishing off his 850 class pannier tank and test running my 1076 Buffalo pannier tank around the MRC's test tracks (Gareth has rebuilt its chassis as a split axle one). Ivan was busy finishing off a china clay wagon and a couple of coal wagons which I had started the day before at the South Hants MRC show as a demonstration, but due to too much chatting (although I suppose that is the purpose of demonstrating after all), I hadn't finished them. Once he had finished adjusting the loading dock Les joined the rolling stock party and he and Ivan were soon hard at it building Slaters NER hopper wagons for phase 2 of the EMpire project - Empire Mill Pit.

Above you can see Les closest the camera and Ivan furthest away

Here Gareth can be seen wondering what has happened to the sloder he was using (Answer - I had taken it)

The final member of the team, Chris was engrossed for much of the day painting the large clay dry - not quite the same as painting the Forth Rail Bridge, but I think he would disagree.

The EMpire project team meet every 2nd and last Sunday - if you live near or in London, and are either an EM modeller or fancy giving it a try to broaden your skills, or just try soemthing different, do think about joing the MRC and becoming part of our team.

drduncan