It has been over four years since the layouts last outing and probably as long as that since I last blogged about it put that is probably because absolutely nothing ha happened to it in that time! But, with an outing to the Cardiff show in just ten days time looming there has been an intense rush of activity. I have just erected almost the entire layout and have coaxed several lazy points back to life and tested all the petrol locos and after some grumbling about having to work even longer before retiring (but that is very familiar to many of us!), they are now purring along nicely. Will get down to the steam locos tomorrow. 

The main area of work has been directed towards fulfilling a dream I had when designing the layout, namely, to be able to run up to ten or twelve wagon trains which the layout is capable of. Unfortunately the vagaries of rather ancient Wrightlines bogies have always denied me this pleasure, so while progress on the Kinver tram project has been moving along I have been refining the design for and etched version with a test or two on several successive tram etches. As time was running out I had to settle on version four although this is still not perfect but needs must. Who would have thought that I would have achieved this level of modelling nerdiness when this project started but I guess that was over ten years ago. So here we have my own design based on an etch of a sturdy fold up chassis with an array of overlays and pressed out rivets, beautifully etched by Grainge & Hodder and additional details 3D printed myself. But with the final size being only 40mm  by 22mm and nearly fifty separate pieces they are pretty time consuming to but together.

Hence my title of 'Four a Day' being my goal to refit all the stock in time. Unfortunately, like it's similar but more nutritional namesake, it has been a rather difficult target to achieve. Despite considerable extra time being available as we have now packed no longer little Iz off to University, some very unsociable hours I am still struggling to make the deadlines. That is not to say I am not going to do it but I am not going to be doing much else. I have realised that I don't really have to do every wagon as several of the 'specials' only run individually and even then these will provide an interesting comparison to the sleek, correct scale newcomers which incidentally can be used for either 16.5mm or 14mm gauge.

I shall leave you with a couple of pics of the first few which have rolled (very smoothly!), off the production line.