I attended (with Natalie) the Diesel & Electric Show on the 19th and 20th of February, the first time it has been held and first time I've been to the Telford International Centre. We were there helping out on the DEMU stand all weekend. On the Sunday I started working on my 465/2 conversion from Hornby spare Networker (466) bodyshells, but more on that later. First a quick report.

The show itself was good I felt, though I felt it could be improved in a few areas. Parking (particularly attendant/security communications in relation to directing etc) was a bit of an issue on the Saturday, but less of an issue Sunday. Aside from that the quality of layouts on show seemed good, with a good mixture I felt. The balance of traders could have been a bit better, would have liked to have seen a few smaller traders (reasons have been given for why this wasn't possible on the thread for the show on rmweb, which seem reasonable). I didn't buy anything model wise, but just a few tools and some books that were a good price for second hand.

Glad to have attended and the DEMU stand was fairly busy for most of the weekend, with a number of queries and interest. What was nice was to see a good number of children interested and parents asking questions about how to get them started etc.

On the Sunday I took along the parts for the Networker conversion I'm working on and made a start on one of the center cars (the non-toilet one). Part of the initial reason for taking the items along (I forgot to grab them for Saturday and detoured back home on my way back Saturday evening) was to ascertain which parts I'm still needing (one non-toilet bodyshell short!) after talking with Paul Wade (LyddRail) who had kindly sent me plans and detail drawings for the Networkers which will prove helpful as I progress. Hopefully I can manage to track down some more bodyshells (ideally I'd like to make 2 465/2 units (which means I need another 4 or 5 bodyshells)), they do come up occasionally on eBay, but seem to attract some silly bids at times.

My efforts on the 465 center car were fairly productive, with the parts for one of the center cars cut out and temporarily glued to the rest of the body so as to get the underframe lined up. I managed to glue the end on the body a little out of line, so it'll have to come off anyway. the underframe was cut ever so slightly too short on one half, so a gap will have to be filled. I am however considering making a new underframe from plasticard due to the difficulty of getting the underframes (I can get them but they're a bit expensive now at nearly £10 each!).

For the other car I am short a bodyshell (non-toilet car) to easily make the end of the center toilet car, and with how difficult it is proving to get extra bodyshells now, I am thinking I might have to cut up parts from the left over shell:

Having scale plans will certainly help matters now (thanks to Paul Wade (LyddRail)), I will have to print them off and reduce them down to 1/76th from the 1/25th scale they're drawn in. I only wish I could find any plans for the 376s so I could have a stab at scratchbuilding one, suspect I might have to do that from photos/eye etc.

Thats all for this update. Hopefully won't be so long between posts, but life (particularly my health) has rather gotten in the way in recent years.

Attached are a few photos of the progress.