First a bit of catching up - survived Weston show intact, no best in show this year but as we were beaten by a layout with real water, Iz was not too upset! Very good day out (apart from the full size trains which were awful!) at Warley show on Sunday. Once again I was most impressed by the Dutch and Belguim layouts, they do seem to have a flair for doing the unusual in a very convincing fashion. What is more, I didn't actually spend very much this time!

Back to the modeling. The cover shot;

is actually a bit misleading - this was the state it was in before I started on it! I got this far last year on the KB Scale kit that I was converting from O-14 to 0-16.5 but stalled for some reason. When I determined to get it going again I quickly realised that it was just not going to work. The rather complicated compensated chassis was just too stiff and the plastic final drive gear was spinning on the axle. I did manage to free the mechanism a bit but then my attempt at LocTite ing the gear in place rather predictably ended with me glueing the whole thing up solid. I was not defeated though - well I was for a bit but then got thinking about the pile of Tufnol off cuts I got off Ebay a while ago. My thinking ran that as it was a well tank and therefore the frames are pretty solid, I could machine up a solid chassis. I found a bit off suitable width, clamped it in the milling machine and off I went. Am afraid that the little white camera had gone missing again so don't have any pics of this stage but here is the almost finished chassis;

I made up new coupling rods and clamped these to the frames and then drilled through for the axle holes, the bushes are then just pushed in and have stayed that way with no glue. Here it is withe motor fitted having taken the oppertunity to fit a slightly larger one with a Branchlines gearbox;

And with rods and rest of whells fitted. You might just be able to see a new idea for pickups - as the chassis is a solid non conductive block, I was able to drill it out and fit two 0.8 rods on each side. I then wound some Phospher Bronze wire around to form a spring so the wipers act against each other and press on the wheels - seems to be working so far. The whole thing is really just crying out to be split axle though but this is going just a bit far for me at the moment.

Now, time for some testing. Building on my new philosophy of getting the basics right before the pretty bits are added, I have set up a decent run of Hornby track on the studio floor where (due to lack of bookings!), it can remain undisturbed for a while. The chassis has now spent the last few hours whizzing around increasingly freely - apart from when I realised it had stopped, went to investigate and found it off the track with a cat next to it trying to look inocent!

In other news - Trevor has now finished the chassis for my Alco scratch build and very nice they look too. I will go and pick it up in the next few days and then I have to do my bit and build the body - a project for any spare time over Christmas. Another project that I really wish I had had time for over the Summer was the shed for little Iz. This is a long running and very twisty tale which does not need repeating here but the end result is that I have completely rebuilt a very rotten shed with various bits donated by some very nice people. The result is certainly going to unique! The best bit though is that when Iz looses interest / out grows it, it could make a very nice home for a OO9 layout!