Leaderboard

Progress on the Slaters Simplex took a step back , a combination of 'Chemo lethargy' and 'cock up'. I was dismantling the loco prior to getting it ready to prime the body work and decided to try and test run the chassis having slightly increased the back-to-back to make it run through my points correctly. Unfortunately disaster struck and the DCC sound chip let the magic smoke out. A repair/replacement is on its way I hope thanks to Digitrains. I also decided to revisit my decision to abandon the 'Stour valley project' which I had made when I first got my unpleasant diagnosis back in February. At the end of the day none of us knows how long we have but what I do know is that I have more time available for modelling now than I've ever had before and I had damn well better make use of it! To that end I packed up the centre boards of Fen End Pit and got back out of the garage the two boards I'd built which had the goods yard for Clare built on them. There was a bit of work to do replacing a relay board I'd 'borrowed' for Fen End Pit but the track is now all wired and working back to the point I had previously got to. That has given me the chance to run a P4 loco up and down again which has been fun. I've got the next baseboard pretty much drawn up ready to cut, that will feature the platforms and station building. Also I've restarted work on a old old old project. A few years ago I was given a kit for a Crownline J20 which a friend had had 'maturing' in his cupboard. The packing date on the box says it all. The kit is very much 'old school', had drawn artwork for the etches (you can tell as they are sometimes not quite a symmetrical as you might like). The biggest issue I've had so far is with the splashers over the wheels. These were clearly designed to house oversize wheels with steam-roller flanges and were about 2-3mm too big in terms of their diameter, This has meant a lot of work because the holes for them in the foot-plate were equally oversized. I've got one side completed now and it isn't looking too bad. As an experiment I tried modelling up the sandboxes in 3D CAD and then printing on the resin printer. I was quite happy with the results and may opt to use them rather than battling with the rather crude etches of the kit. Amazingly the little .5mm x..5mm L section around the bottom of the sandbox came out in the print. Bear in mind this is ~10mm x 5mm x 6mm. Hoping for a 'site visit' to Clare over the weekend for some more photographs if I can stay awake long enough with the current quantity of drugs and the heat! David

Thanks to the crew working overtime, and lots of helpful stewards from the Ely club, Fen End Pit got set up in the gym ready for tomorrow. Hope to see plenty of rmwebber's there, please come and say 'hi' David