I was in Sabadell earlier (G-maps is your friend) on a photography gig... All was going well until my hearing aid packs in, right in the middle of a discussion; thank heavens for being able to lip read in not just English, but also in Catalan as well...

After that disaster, two hours were spent trawling "The Manchester of Catalonia" (I think they call it that, because every time I've ever been there, I get wet through... Just like in the real Manchester) for a set of hearing aid batteries, some tea was in order.

On the trawl to find somewhere that actually sold tea (took me a 4km hike to find somewhere that sold something that didn't resemble chopped grass), I passed a little junk shop, and being a bit of a magpie, I went in to see if they'd got any antique Nikon lenses just for the fun of it.

They hadn't, but they'd got this little fella...

Yep, it's a DB something or other, I don't know the class, but at 20€, it seemed tempting enough to any magpie with some N-scale track, but even more tempting when a quick recall from the 'loco list' stored on the iPod Touch of old local engines to find that there were at least four of this near on design on Martorell shed near Barcelona and they used to haul light freight/passenger up the local metals. And as I've got the paint in stock anyway, I thought it would just make a nice bit of practise giving it a paint job... As for 20€, it could have sat at the back of a layout and not done anything, apart from be a test bed for the painting techniques that need to be brought out of retirement.

Got it home, took the above photo of it (couldn't be bothered to do it properly, so it's a quick snap), and then dropped it on the English layout (still got to post photos!), thinking that it is going to be one seriously rough dog... Nope, smooth as anything, absolutely glided across very quietly indeed.

It didn't even get point hang like a similar length wheelbase from a certain (ex) UK manufacturer.

The more I find of these little locomotives from German manufacturers, and the more I find about the local lines around here, the more I'm tempted to put all my English stuff back in storage and just concentrate locally; especially with some of the old industrial settings and stations, meaning that a very interesting and involving layout can be had in a 3x1' space or less.