Give us a "D"

D!

And I'll just stop right there and you can choose how this ends for yourself. I'd suggest one of the following: debacle, despondency, dire, dreadful. I think a pattern is emerging, don't you? Alternatively, you could just leave it at D, as in "D-grade: not very good".

After several months of working on the three IHAs, I'd got to the point of adding the hood supports. It was then that I noted how lardy they appeared alongside the first wagon. I know the old adage "measure twice, cut once" as well as anyone (obsessive re-measuring is one reason why I work so slowly), but still...

Naturally, on checking, it turned out that the entire batch are too wide. Not only that, they're too wide by too much for me to ignore it; and too solidly-built to be dismantled without wrecking the whole thing. So it's back to Square One, except that this time every single part is being checked against a micrometer before it gets glued to anything else. This is going to make them even slower to build, but at least the damned things will be the right size.

In the meantime, I've resorted to a bit of retail therapy to perk myself up. A Class 60 has arrived: 60054 "Charles Babbage" in Railfreight Petroleum. My intention is to repaint this as 60055 "Thomas Barnardo", with EWS "beastie" vinyls on the triple grey paint scheme. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten that Fox have stopped selling EWS branded items, so I'm not sure how this is going to work out. I could remove the sector markings and paint in the yellow panel easily enough, I think, but that would still leave me needing to source the actual beastie logo and I'm not sure how to do that yet.

The other new arrival is another Class 66. This is another Farish 66135, so it'll have to be renumbered. That should be easily done: Fox still sell what they describe as "maroon numbering for freight locomotives" (no mention of DB or EWS, see) so I'll pick up a sheet of those soon.

While I was at the Liverpool show recently I bowed to the inevitable and bought a new razor saw. The old one has been missing for well over a year now and it's clearly not going to turn up any time soon, or at least it wouldn't have until after I'd bought a replacement. I dare say it'll show up any day now; it's been that kind of week.