Oh Mr. Porter!

I can only echo this sentiment. There was a lot of help going round. I know Fawley's captain spent a good 40 mins under the Railway childrens layout towards the end of day 2. If you look carefully at the overhead shot of the Railway Childrens layout sometimes you'll notice the faces are blurred so you can't see (if you pause it right) who is working on the layout. That secret is safe with me :-)

 

I'd imagine it was a bit more kick/scramble in the final as there was (someone correct me if I'm wrong?) no pre building allowed. But I'm sure the call of "anyone got a staple gun" still got answered by a team with one.

And I can only echo the echo! Despite the fact that our team got more help than it gave out, I do remember that a measly bag of ballast was slipped under the table

The show was worth doing it for the friendly folk alone and, though I think it's safe to say that 'Fire And Ice' was a two horse race from the start, if the show gets another series (and we're not blacklisted!), I'd personally love a reunion/rematch with the other teams.

Thank you for your very kind words, Castle.

Fawley Hill really is one of those rare magical places in the world that you have to see to believe. I'm yet to find a way of describing it to folk without sounding a bit barmy! In regards to the challenge, I don't know if we were brave or just very, very naive! We certainly couldn't have got as far as we did without help and guidance from the Fliers and Dynamos.

I look forward to seeing the Fawley Fliers return in the finale and show folk how it's done! 

Just to keep the ball slowly rolling, here's another picture. They wanted each of us to bring a model for 'backstory filming' though, inevitably, this stuff didn't make it into the final cut. I brought my model of Weston, Clevedon & Portishead No. 4 and the crew from 'Oh, Mr. Porter!' due to the fact that I rarely model 4mm anymore.

The fun fact for today is about our 'mountain'. Some of you may have picked up that the mountain is named 'Mt. Misery' and there's a very long and entertaining story about that...

Well there isn't really, truth be told.

I'd been reading up on the WL&WR and was inspired when I saw pictures of Waterford station just before the turn of the century. A quick Google search or a flick through 'The Waterford, Limerick & Western Railway' by Ernie Shepherd will reveal that this station is dwarfed by a huge intimidating rockface. I'm hardly an encyclopedia of railway facts, but this was something very different to your average station scenery!

When the mountain crept into the layout plans, it seemed like a perfect name for something that we all knew would be a pain in the backside to build. It also furthered my agenda of slowly turning the layout into a mish mash of Irish railways 

Here's a few pics of the Clyde Puffer I built for our layout.

 

 

Excellent video and very enjoyable! Who owns the UG class btw? And is it weathered? 

The U class is mine and it's weathered (I can't have spotless locos!). It was one of my first weathering jobs and isn't brilliant as a result, unfortunately. Here's a picture from May 2017: