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It's been a month since I last posted in my blog..... things have been getting done but nothing really worth talking about. I've built the third of a set of four cardboard kits for Metropolitan Ashbury carriages. This one is the all-first. Truth be told it fought me all the way and I'm not entirely satisfied with it. It looks okay from a distance of about 3', which is the baseline test for my models, so it won't be destined for the Shelf of Appalling Mistakes or the dustbin. I then moved on and repainted a pair of LNER vans from Bachmann. This now gives me a rake of five GCR-ish vans. I was going to buy some more but at nearly £20 a throw versus £10 for the Parkside kit well.... I ended up with a pair of Parkside kits instead. These I am altering slightly by leaving the vacuum cylinders off- for some reason the kits have vacuum cylinders but not the pipes- with the eventualy intention of having two rakes of vans, one vac-fitted and one unfitted. I have been reading my book of ex-GCR wagons and the general gist seems to be that only stock for perishables traffic such as fish would have been vac-fitted. So, for the present I am working toward a 1:3 ratio in my goods stock of fitted to unfitted stock.

Last year I was given the opportunity to start my own garden railway... all the bits had been bought when i was more affluent so most of the track and stock had been bought before. Without going into too much detail here are a series of photos I the development it took over the nine months or so of building it. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end. We moved house and had to take the line up. But all is not lost! Despite having a leaky back yard...efforts are afoot to recreate the line, slightly bigger with not so many too tight s curves! Watch this space...

So I have been Adding some of the EOT lamps from DCCconcetps onto some of my wagons. These fit onto the wagons pretty easily coming with spring pick-ups, wire, lamps, flashing device and a reed switch with magnets in case you wanted have a automatic switch on the layout that turns the lamp on and off. I see no need for the reed switch as in real life the lamp is always and on the train. Having said that these lamps look pretty prototypical when installed and have a nice flash rate when running along. I have installed the wiring in the container in this example which is a IKA flat with 48' container permanently mounted on the wagon. I have also fitted these lamps onto a MEA, FEA and FLA wagons.