By way of a brief update (probably won't be adding much for a while, as I'm soon off on my holidays) here are a few snippets of recent progress ...

The City has featured on the blog before but it came back to the works for attention as I felt that a tight spot had mysteriously developed since I built it. Not sure how this could be, since the wheels should guarantee quartering and the outside cranks don't seem to have shifted ... or perhaps it's just that my standards have improved, and what would have been acceptable running when I built it now doesn't quite cut the mustard? In any case, the outside rods were removed and some tolerances slightly opened up, and now she goes as well as I remember her running originally. While she was on the workbench, I also set about trying to improve haulage by adding as much lead to the frames as I could easily manage. This has improved things, but there's still a bit of scope for adding more weight between the chassis halves. I also purposefully haven't added any weight to the body forward of the midline of the forward drivers, but a bit more might not upset the balance too much. The trick is to be able to add weight in such a way that it can be removed, if the experiment fails ...

Also on the bench is this Dean Goods which is slowly inching its way to being a reliable slow and steady runner with a Comet chassis. There's a bit of a saga to this one: it began as a stalled project by another RMwebber, but after quite a bit of work and a few setbacks, it's now approaching the home stretch. Once it's done, I'll go into more detail in a proper blog post, as it's been quite a tale to get it this far! Incidentally, this is no criticism of the original model or of the sale of it to me, as I got it at a very reasonable price and have enjoyed rebuilding it to this state, learning a lot in the process, which I hope will serve me well on my next kit builds.

Meanwhile, a pair of brown vehicles (dust on lens - sorry) - the Beetle cattle wagon is the Parkside model, which goes together tremendously well, this being the second that I've done, and the David Geen Mink which I built earlier this year, now awaiting decals. For the time being, the Beetle is equipped with screw links at one end, and tension locks at the other, to serve as a conversion vehicle - quite handy when you have mixed stock with differing coupling standards. As for the Mink, I've since found a good photo of the roof which shows the need for some extra detailing, which I'll also add to the second Mink when I build it.

Also visible in the background is the goods shed, which has had its hinged interior doors replaced by exterior sliding doors, which I think goes a bit further to disguising its Midland origin. It's a large shed, rather dominating the station area, but from what I can gather, it wasn't at all unusual for the shed to be substantially larger than the station building, and I don't find that it looks out of place.