Visiting guest over the New Year gave a reason to run a few trains round Clare. It would very satisfying to get a few locomotives out of their storage and run trains round and round, even better when they performed nicely. Passenger services including this Alan Gibson E4 with a short rake of Gresley coaches. The additional horse box, marshaled next to the engine, hints at a New Year race meeting.

Meanwhile a J65 'Buckjumper' from a Riceworks kit waits patiently at the starter signal before heading to Cambridge. (Yes, I know that there weren't too many tank engines down the Stour Valley, but please humour me!)

This brings me on to the New Year project - I decided to celebrate Christmas and the release of the Accurascale J69 by purchasing one of the Riceworks J69 kits from London Road Models. I think I get more pleasure from being able to say 'I built that' than 'I bought that' (not being critical of people who don't feel that way, each to their own) plus I suspected that purchasing the Accurascale model would probably result in me feeling the need to design a new etch chassis. Having spent quite a bit of time recently on kit design I just felt I wanted to build something which I could feel confident would go together without throwing significant parts away and starting again. Having built the J65 many years ago, and having hopefully become a more competent modeller in the intervening years (decades?), I have confidence that I should be able to put it together.

Progress so far has been to assemble the coupling rods and then the frames, making the necessary changes for using 'Continuous Springy Beam' suspension. It will be interesting to compare the riding of the J65 which has old-school compensation with the CSBs once it is running.

I'll keep you all updated on how it goes.

Happy New Year everyone.

David