andyram

Brown eyed girl - Van Morrison

Good morning all. Best wishes to all , especially those who are ailing in one way or another. Also best wishes to Dave (TG) and good luck with the sorting out. I feel it is a good, but brave, idea to sort through the loft effects so soon after Is' passing. Like you say though best to get it done sooner. Today has dawned quite bright and sunny. The forecast for the next few days is for things to become progressively warmer, peaking at around 29 degrees midweek. As nice as that will be I doubt the heat will help the tired children (and staff) negotiate the final week of term. However after the recent weather we should not complain. Yesterday was spent at home with some work in the garden. A heavy rain shower cut this short so I managed to sneak into the railway room for half an hour. After getting the school pupil's Flying Scotsman loco running last week I decided to tackle one of my own out of service models. A bit of wheel cleaning and some oiling around, plus some alterations to the brass connectors, and my Hornby J94 was brought back to life. That leaves just a Bachmann J39 and a Fairburn tank to try and bring back into service. Yesterday morning we had driven over to the local retail park to visit the Marks and Spencer's Food Hall in order to purchase one of their dine in for £10 offers. The Next sale meant Sarah kept us there longer than intended. We emerged from the shops to chaos. The council have just completed renovations to the roundabout at the top of the access road. The reason was to "improve traffic flow" at what is a well known bottle neck. The lights have just been brought into use and the result was a gridlocked car park and access road. It took us half an hour to fight away out. We were one of the lucky ones it seems, a friend of mine stated it took them twice that yesterday afternoon whilst the local newspaper carried news of some people face with a two and a half hour wait earlier in the week. I am sure I was not alone in referring to those responsible as cockwombles!! Enjoy your Sunday.

It was decorated

The season started in Scotland this weekend with some cup games. Ridiculously early if you ask me. I know the English teams have started playing pre season friendlies and there were quite a few playing yesterday. I must admit that, despite being a big football fan, I am finding the summer break getting shorter and shorter. By May I am very much ready for a break from the game whether that be going to watch home games or watching live matches on television. Admittedly this summer we have had the Euros, but every summer there seems to be earlier starts to competitive fixtures and a multitude of summer "friendly" tournaments. This year the league season starts on August 6th (although there is a live television game the day before). This is a very early start. Traditionally the league season used to kick off mid August, usually around the date of my birthday on the 15th, not sure of the need for earlier starts. That being said I was pleased to see my other local team, Burton Albion, warm up for life in the Championship with a 3-0 win over Stoke City. I will be interested to see how they do this year. It will be strange having to face them in a competitive local Derby this year. It could prove to be one of the friendlier Derbies as there are many Rams fans who also follow the Brewers.

Only just found this thread. Firstly a belated thank you for bringing your layout to last year's Weston show. I am so sorry to hear that you had problems with the layout. I had plenty of issues with my Skaleby West layout that day too. I hope that you will get things running smoothly in the future.

Well a 4-0 defeat by Benfica does not fill you with confidence!

Great pics again. Had you been on that NMT a few days ago you nay have ended up on BBC4

What a great little layout. I would love something small like this to take on holiday.

Yes. I posted this picture before the ones on Skaleby West's thread.

I have had it years Andy. I ran it on my original layout, but it stopped working after a while and has been parked on the old layout in the garage since we moved. I gave it a bit of tender loving care this afternoon, treating it to a wheel clean and a few drops of oil, before running up and down the new project (as you have seen!!). It ran smoothly. Nice to finally have it back in service.

I have just found this thread. What a great idea for a layout. I have seen a few boxfile layouts before but mainly in smaller scales. This looks great and is progressing well. I like the use of the walls to disguise the sides of the box for. I look forward to seeing this develop.

The world we live in - The Killers

You still have the Champions League to look forward to.

Ghastly tasting green

New motive power on service trains at Skaleby West today. J94 number 68080 is seen after arrival with the day's first train after recently returning to service.

Skaleby East has been used for loco servicing today. J94 number 68080 has received some tender loving care in order to bring it back into use after 18 months out of service. Here it is seen on a light engine test.

Good morning all. Best wishes to all for the weekend and thoughts with LE whilst in hospital. The last few days have been so busy with work commitments that it was only last night that I caught up with the full story of the events in Nice. Simply shocking! Thoughts with everybody who survived and the families of the victims. The event is so sickening. Sadly it also strikes a chord as the events remind me so much of part of the controversial computer game "Grand Theft Auto" where such rampages are common place. I wonder whether the arguments about the influences of such games will resurface in time. The penultimate school week is now at an end leaving just 5 teaching days left. Yesterday was the school's sports day which I always end up organising. Despite the absence of a few staff through illness and some last minute changes to the plan it seemed to go ok. We did end up cutting it a bit short due to the cold temperature. Yes! In July we had to curtail the event because some of the children were shivering from the cold. Yesterday was quite fun due to the banter between myself and another member of staff. The previous night a few of us went out for one of the staff's retirement celebration. The location was a local Indian resturant. Now for many years I was not really a big eater of foreign food, only gaining a taste for Indian, Chinese and Italian dishes in recent times. One of teaching assistants bombarded me with reminders of that as we browsed the menu - suggesting I would choose a safe English dish. We ended up choosing the same dish. She could not finish it stating it was far too hot and spicy. I polished of all off mine stating it was quite mild! I reminded her of the fact quite a lot yesterday!

Yes that will be the plan. I will try and raise the blocks slightly. The corner block just needs raising at the rear whilst the second block needs more soil packing underneath.

Rule the World - Take That

I would say that you are over qualified by actually KNOWING about trains!

Thursday 14th July is a historic day for the Keeper's Grange Light Railway because it is the day that has seen the first loco movements. The day has also seen two gauges in action. I blame my wife Sarah for that! A few days ago, whilst discussing the build, she stated that she thought I would be running smaller trains in the garden. She meant 00 gauge of course. As regular readers of this thread will know, I debated between 00 and G scales for much of last summer. It was only this year that I "decided" on the larger gauge. But Sarah's comments made me think again. I do have a good collection of 00 gauge and the thought of running them on scale length trains over a decent distance was very appealing. I did think that the concrete base would easily take 00 gauge. Today I found some old 00 gauge track and laid it onto the concrete base. I rigged up a controller and ran a Hornby M7 up and down. It did not run smoothly and stalled in several places. I am not sure whether this was due to the track being old or an indication that things would not work. The smaller track showed up all the slight variations in height of the blocks. After the 00 gauge experiment I reverted back to the g scale and laid down some of the larger track. My single g scale loco, Otto, ran up and down with no problems. True it was a little stiff at first, but this was its first run since purchase and it settled down after a while. Its run did show up a slight problem with the curve area laid last week. The height of the blocks varies too much and will need relaying. Apart from that a successful first run. After this experiment it certainly has made me feel that g scale remains the way forward, but I do still want a 00 gauge layout outdoors too. That could be a longer term project. There is a video of Otto's first run on my Facebook page (see below).

Evening all. Hump day safely negotiated and now 7 days until the end of term. Tomorrow looks set to be a challenging day with three parent meetings and an appraisal meeting with the headteacher followed by a retirement meal that I really do not want to attend. All could be difficult times, probably with the exception of the appraisal. Tonight I can claim a bit if success. A few weeks ago I was approached by one of our older pupils for some help. His dad is recovering from a serious illness and he has started to get back into model railways. His grandfather has gifted him an old Hornby Triang model of Flying Scotsman. However the model did not work, having stalled in lots of smoke. He asked me if I would have a look. Believing it to be beyond my capabilities I promised to let a friend at the club have a look at it. Sadly work commitments has kept me away from the club ever since. The young man leaves school next week so I was desperate to get it back to him with some success. Tonight I had a play around with it. I tried cleaning the wheels with no success. I then removed the body and applied some oil to various parts, especially the gearing. Result - the loco spluttered back into life! It did not run smoothly, but at least it is moving. A few runs up and down saw it become a bit more smooth. Hopefully I can get to the club and give it a proper run in next week. I do feel quite pleased I can give the lad some good news tomorrow. Enjoy the downward slope to the weekend.

Not the start Brendan Rogers would have hoped for. He had better hope for a resounding second leg victory.

Definitely

I am sure there will be a queue of people wanting to purchase Pencarne.