Gosh, nearly 6 months since the last entry!

Not a great deal of progress with the layout - although I have applied a base coat of colour to the trackwork on two of the boards and started to contemplate wiring up on the third board, That's the one with the main station throat pointwork, so represents more of a challenge than the two dealt with so far. There's nothing like thinking about a job to avoid actually having to do it!!!

Anyway, I have been doing some modelling over the intervening period - some of it "cheque-book" modelling and some physical modelling! Inspired by the photo of a Greenfield to Llandudno holiday train on page 101of Larry Goddard's Delph to Oldham book (Foxline), I wanted to represent it on Delph as if it had in fact started it's journey on the branch. Larry has produced a rake of 6 coaches, the first four of which are the same diagrams as visible in the photo and the last two types of his choice. I've built the bogies as larry doesn't work in P4 and as a result the whole thing is still work-in-progress. The bogies are a mix of Dave Bradwell sprung units, where AJ couplings are required, and the new Brassmaster/Jim Smith-Wright compensated units (very quick and easy to assemble, I must say) for the remainder. Cosmetic side-frames are 247 Developments for welded type and MJT/Dart Castings for the rivetted version. I haven't made and fitted the AJ's, yet but the coach to coach couplings are Masokits types, which allow coupling by just pushing the vehicles together and which are very easily adjusted for length so the (sprung) buffer heads just touch.

Painting of bogies and weathering still to do.

The photos below show the assembled train (in the correct sequence per the photos) with my partially completed Crab at the head - again, as per the photo. Sorry about the poor quality of the photos, but lighting conditions are not the best and the use of flash seems to make them to stark and too much contrast.

First, the re-creation of the published photo

More detailed views of the various coaches

Finally, a view fron the rear as the train departs Delph on its way to the sea-side.

Dave.