So, self-isolating is what railway modellers are good at most of the time although the spring weather means that the garden has taken priority for a few days. That said, a photo session in the railway room was long overdue so I thought I'd share some of the progress that's been made on "Blackford & Hinton" over the winter months....

Here, the trainspotters are in place perched on the fence watching an 04 heading an up cement block working while Neasden's Stanier tank 42437 heads north with a local. They've just copped 45543 coming on shed for servicing and turning having worked a special from the north and handed the train over to a Woodford/Blackford V2 for the journey south... 

The Hornby tank is a very recent pre-owned acquisition. I was in Warrington recently for a car service and used the courtesy car to seek out Culcheth Models as I'd seen their ad in the mags - well worth a visit, by the way (I have no connection). However, the loco was initially a disaster when I got home and placed it on the tracks. The trailing bogie derailed at the slightest excuse dragging the rest of the loco with it. I actually don't think the loco had ever been previously run as the packet of extra bits, couplings included, had never been opened.  As an aside, the other major problem was that the supplied couplings protruded so far from from the loco that the scale distance between buffers to the next vehicle was about 6 feet! So, what to do .....

I thought about adding lead to the bogie but then had a brainwave. I recalled that Mainline locos (4-6-0s) had a coil spring above the leading bogie and decided to cannibalise a redundant chassis and re-use the spring. Hey Presto! Stanier tankie is now transformed into a superb runner and has already put in a lot of scale miles on the layout that is roughly two-thirds of a scale mile for one circuit. To my surprise and satisfaction, the pony truck is quite happy without modification.

As regards the couplings, I cut down a spare coupling (Airfix? - don't know) from the spares box and super-glued it to the trailing bogie such that it protruded just beyond the buffers. However, I had to use just use the bar and remove the hook as the bogie otherwise wouldn't accomodate it - not a problem as most of my locos have the hook removed to make uncoupling that much easier anyway. This was a trick I learned in the late 70s when i was a member of Hull MRS before work took me down south. 

I don't know whether the bogie problem is well known with this model and I'm just late to the party but would be interested to know others' experiences.

This pic shows the addition to the layout of the shed exit signal, knocked together from spare bits of Ratio LMS signal kits. The little cabin is obviously a proprietary kit that was already built and that had been lying around in the spares box and looking for a home. The Hornby 72xx is a lovely runner and after the end of steam in the Welsh valleys, some were displaced to Oxford and Banbury and worked over to Woodford Halse on occasion. It's had a coat of Humbrol matt varnish to take the sheen off the plastic but would benefit from a bit of heavy weathering.

The corner filler of terraced housing is a mix of Superquick and Metcalfe kits but the line of low relief terrace backs on the far side were scratch-built by me around 40 years ago and have withstood more than a few house moves - usually wrapped in cotton wool and secured in my car ....

All of the signals on the layout have had a hole drilled into the base and a piece of plastic rod inserted and glued. This enables the signals to be located into holes drilled into the base board but to be removed when required for track cleaning, etc. 

More to follow ....