Merry Christmas to all of our readers in RMWeb-land. We hope to see some of you at St Albans in January.

A word or two about the photo… I must thank Peter W Gray for the idea and the composition. The photo is inspired by his photo (published in the Jan 2005 'Steam Days') of 5015 Kingswear Castle waiting at signals to depart from Newton Abbot in January 1962. Peter's photo is lit by the lights of the platform where he was standing. The equivalent platform at St Ruth stops rather short of where it would be needed so there is some licence involved with the lighting of this scene. In fact I need to thank Chris for holding a fluorescent anglepoise to shed just enough light on the layout so that you can see the loco but without drowning out the lights from the signals or the signal box. If I'd been better prepared then we'd have had a couple of amber LEDs in the cab and under the footplate to reproduce the firebox glow seen in Peter's photo.

We don't have a 'Castle' so the loco is 'King George V' built from a Foxhunter kit by the late Phil Kerr who also did the masters. It's a nice model but it doesn't really produce steam - that's been added in the edit.