Hi all!
Between my last post and this there have been five heart blocks and a pace maker. Fortunately for me, the last block, which lasted nine seconds, occurred when I was in bed in hospital, being monitored. Eight hours later, the pace maker was installed.
Apart from this, I am struggling along with the ballasting of the track. I try to do a bit each day, but 20+ metres of track is a lot of track. Also, since I had ripped up the foam underlay and used cork, since the cork portions were hand crafted (?) from sheets, when I laid the track again, it did not coincide exactly with the centre of the cork bits. So, to make things look decent, I have to trim the cork.
As commented before, I had three OO gauge steam locomotives, but only four passenger coaches and no goods stock. So I purchased four coaches in LMS livery to go behind my LMS locomotive, a rake of seven goods wagons, including a brake van and a particular Derby lightweight DMU (second hand) that I had wanted for some time now. In the past Hattons had reduced, from time to time, the price of various Bachmann DMUs, but not this one and, finally, the price went up substantially. So, in the end, I have had to pay for a second hand DMU the same price for which I could have had it new two or three years ago.