Well that's the trauma of Christmas over for another year. Another chunk of modelling time irretrievably lost, bah humbug!

Progress on the Deltic has been slow as a result but it's going in the right direction. The loco had the opportunity to stretch its legs on my pal's layout this evening and I'm pleased to say that it's shaping up very nicely. The slow wind-up to the highest notch is pure Napier heaven! The session also gave me a good idea how I can enhance the two-engine experience, something I now need to test on the bench.

As a short aside from the Deltic, I did a bit of work on the 86 sound project as my Hornby / Heljan hybrid model is nearing completion. One of the sounds in the project was a nice Mk3 coach 'wail'; the sound you get from the airbag suspension, typically heard when they leave the station. Nice, but fairly basic. Well earlier in the year I heard plenty of these wails on a photting trip to Manningtree, where trainloads of Mk3's arrive and depart every half an hour. At the time I was kicking myself not to have taken my recording gear, but took the opportunity to capture it, purely for reference, using the voice memo app on my phone. Turns out that the recordings were far better than I expected. I have extracted 8 of the best ones and created a flowchart that plays them at random, on demand, and at just the right interval to simulate slow-speed navigation through pointwork or round curves etc. Once I'm happy with the execution I'll roll this feature out to other locos typically used with Mk3 stock (47, 67, 87 etc). I've also added the ability to run the traction motor blowers whilst stationary (already present on my 85, 87 & 90).

The photo of the Mk3 was taken at Crewe Works open day, the same day as the Deltic in the previous blog entry. How long before we get a better model of them?