My wife and I met up with several members of the Hillingdon Railway Modellers club at Telford in September and we were invited to visit their December 19th Open Track Day. My wife grew up in Hillingdon and we first had lunch with two historians of the area. Then off to the club meet for the last hour of their afternoon.

I never had time to take any photos or videos. Too much good conversation and admiration of the various trains running around the four track Gauge 0 oval. I am delighted to say that Dobbin (the Jinty) performed extremely well, doing many circuits in forward and backward mode, medium, fast and slow speed. The slow running occasionally had a loss of power, always at board connections. A very nice Black Five was running as well as some other tank engines and a fine model of 10800, a diesel electric prototype locomotive that was often seen in the Birmingham area and was, I think, based at Rugby for a while. A rake of Dapol tankers looked particularly smart.

I also tried to get my Athearn Genesis MT-4 to run on the 00 scale oval but with no luck. I really cannot say what the problem might have been but it just goes to show that one should never try to run a locomotive in front of spectators without first testing.

The Gauge 0 group is building a fine model of a fictitious station on the Chester Whitchurch (ex-LNWR) line. The quality of the modelling is outstanding. I look forward to seeing the entire layout when assembled - it will fit into the oval test track, a nice use of available resources. The project is named Grindley Brook and can be seen here.

Finally, I might add that I am delighted to be making the switch to Gauge 0 - it was a very good decision!