Yesterday me and K went on a cycle ride down the Avon to Portishead, which gave the opportunity to visit my not-quite-closest model shop (Model Railways direct). The recent release of the Bachmann Midland 20T break van is perfect for Buckden, so I'd been planning to slowly build up a collection over a few model shop visits. However, the lovely people at Model Railways direct were out of stock, and also let me know that Bachmann have completely sold out of all of them - which is impressive as they only went on sale a few weeks ago.... Not wanting to wait until next year at the earliest for them to restock, an EMERGENCY TRAIN SHOP VISIT was called for, and we cycled back double quick back to Bristol to get to Modelmania before they closed. Fortunately they still had a couple left (And still do actually if anyone local needs one) which resulted in the little line up below:

Going away from the camera these are catalogue numbers 38-553 in LMS Bauxite, 38-550 in BR grey (without duckets), a Parkside Dundas PC49 diag. 1657 in Phoenix Precision LMS grey (my first kit built over a year ago) and 38-551 in BR Grey (without duckets). These should grace my goods trains very nicely as I build them up. Given how fast Bachmann sold out of these, it doesn't look like Parkside is at risk of going bust anytime soon, as shortly they be the the only available option in the UK for a while as all the shops run out of stock.

Last week also gave me the opportunity (and impetus as we were having our housewarming party) to afix Buckden it's more permanent position:

Extensions down both sides of the room will soon give some fiddle space and return Buckden to through running, and once I've built a drawbridge past the door, give me a roundy-roundy so I can watch the trains go by.

I'm looking forward to a different type of brake van special in a couple of weeks for the RMWeb driver experience.