Well a little progress has been made on the locomotives clogging up the Workbench of DOOM, progress has been slow as three of them need lining, and trying to do this by hand in N gauge is not easy, especially with hands that seem never to stop shaking.

Anyway a decent coat of weathering will hide a multitude of my sins, so really when you come to think about it, is it really worth the effort, and boy has it been an effort. The first of the Locomotive slowly progressing towards completion is my attempt to represent a Princess, I have a few more details to add to the body and a little tidying up of her crimson coat and I will have to finally sort her chassis out, especially the leading and trailing wheels.


She is missing a bit of lining but I'm not saying where from, I will let you work that out, the problem is which number to apply to her, a hint would be that I have always lined the name Arthur. What I need to do Is order some new numbers and insignias as it appears I have either used the ones I thought I had in stock or they are somewhere in the storage unit of terror?

Progress on the Prince of Wales tank has got a little further than the Princess in that all her lining is applied, like the Princess its now down to adding a little detailing to the body and doing the finial work on her chassis (the trailing wheels need fixing) and then I can work on the mounting the loco body onto the chassis.


I must admit I have a bit of a thing for big tank engines, though I get the feeling she will be the sole 4-6-2T in the fleet, though you never know.....when I finally order the relevant transfers I will number and letter her just like the Princess.

The other locomotive that has required lining was the £40 Jubilee I rescued from Evil Bay, she is now happy in her new coat of crimson, and is slowly being lined out like a decent locomotive should be, I still need to sort out her cylinders and the lining on the lower part of her cab but she is getting there.


I'm not sure if she is turning out to be the bargain I thought she originally was, as I dread to think about how many paintbrushes I have destroyed in anger whilst lining her and the other loco's on the bench. Perhaps what I should have done is just model the BR period modelled by buying loco's and stock off the shelf that need no modifications, I mean lots of people seem to do it , but if everything was easy where would be the fun in that?

Waiting for space on the Workbench is a locomotive I worked on last year and thought would by now have been a valuable member of the fleet, that is until I took it along to the Wigan exhibition.

Everything was going well, I took the loco from my storage box and put her at the head of a local passenger train, setting off on her maiden trip around the layout I drew her to a stop in the station, at which point someone who should have been old enough to know better hoisted the loco off the layout, when I asked what the hell he was doing he slammed it back onto the layout and said "its only a toy %%&)&$*&)" train" the abuse I got from what appeared to be the animals mother was even worse.

The net result was that the leading carriage was badly damaged, and the loco chassis mounts where broken, the buffers and couplings are destroyed and one side of the valve gear is badly damaged and bent, but I suppose it could have been far worst, though it has made me very hesitant about future exhibition attendances as its not the first time the layout has been damaged.

So there you are an update on the progress made and an indication of all the work that still needs to be completed, at some point I will actually complete some of the projects, but are we modellers supposed to actually complete projects. One thing is for sure, I will not be adding any more Jubilee's to the fleet......

As ever until the next time Happy Modelling