Well here is the latest news from Brightspark towers.

In January I was part of the team that took Swaynton to the Southampton Model Railway show at Eastleigh. Thanks for all the kind comments posted. I particularly like Adams picture of the funny blue thing.

When the show is over the bit that no-one sees is the repairs ready for the next outing which is going to be at Basingstoke this weekend. I guess at the last outing we had quite a high attrition rate. There seems to be a problem with alignment of the baseboards and the way that they move during the show.

There are two reasons for this movement. The first is floor movement during the day as the audience passes by on a wooden floor and the second and greater reason is changing humidity and heat levels during the day. The hall that we were in was very cold in the morning and during the day a lot of bodies creates a lot of moisture. Those bodies also put a fair amount of grease and dust into the atmosphere and this builds up on the rails. That is why layouts have pick up problems in the late afternoons.

The major point that suffered baseboard movement was the East Fiddle yard. To the casual viewer that is the Down yard or Bournemouth End. This resulted in several trains either derailing or even uncoupling as they left the yard and went over the joint. We find this highly embarrassing, but the viewers were mostly quite kind in their encouragement and interest.

A consequence of this is that several wagons have missing buffers and a few have broken AJ couplings where part of the train must have caught on part of the structure. By day two we had to cut out some of the trains from the sequence. And here is a problem as some people couldn’t remember which ones. So we sometimes had coal trains coming out of the FY’s at express speeds!

So it is all hands to the pump to replace those AJ’s. I am also checking the heights of the dropper pin or armature. These must be 1mm above the top of the track. I have found mine to be considerably higher. I guess that is why they don’t work on the magnetic uncoupler.

I have replaced the buffers on the Parkside wagons with sprung buffers by 51L. I kept the moulded buffer body in place, and drilled a 1mm hole. Into which I inserted a 1mm O/D 1/2mm I/D brass tube that is glued to the body. Into this I insert the buffer shank making sure that I keep the spring under the head. Then close off the assembly with a short piece of tube glued to the tail of the shank. The appearance should be improved as the buffer heads are now going to be the correct 13 inch diameter.

76009 is also in for repairs. It got mishandled and part of the Walshearts valve gear fell off. I fixed it up on the saturday evening of the show but noticed that the real failure was not having a long enough crank pin. I must have cut it off slightly too short and hoped that the nut would hold it. I have stripped it down and replaced the screw. It now doesn’t seem to run as smoothly as before, but I have run out of time to do anything about it before the weekend.

Meanwhile 76010 sits on the shelf. I am now in possession of a Dapol body for it.

I don’t think it will be ready in time for Chatham...or the test track at ExpoEM.

Finally as mentioned above we are going to Basingstoke. Swaynton is a late entry as another layout had to withdraw. Say hello please and take some nice pictures of the layout and post them here or on the Basingstoke page as my photography is rubbish.