Barry Ten

I'd have to intentionally wire up the smoke unit in the new body for it to happen twice, so hopefully that won't happen. I wouldn't mind connecting it to a suitable decoder, though, at some point.

...and check again!

Viewers of a nervous disposition, look away now... Long-time followers of the blog may remember my 28xx, which was a detailed and repainted Hornby model: The model has always been a favorite of mine, not only because of the work invested in it, but also because it was a birthday present from my wife and therefore had a bit more significance than just any old model bought by me. It has also always run well, in fact it is probably the best of the traditional Hornby tender drive locos I've owned. The model was given a good outing a couple of years ago but has been in a box since then, while I've mainly been concentrating on running DCC equipped models. Over the last year, however, I've gradually been getting more confident with doing my own decoder installations and after fitting decoders into some fairly awkward models, it looked as if the tender drive 28xx would be a doddle, with a simple soldering job and plenty of room for a standard Hornby chip. Given that the slow speed running on DC was good, I anticipated that it would be even better on DCC. Can you tell where this is heading? In the end the decoder installation turned out to be relatively pain-free and I completed the job in about half an hour, taking my time and using plenty of heat-shrink insulation. I hooked up the loco and tender and gave it a test. As always the decoder was wired backwards, but a quick reset of CV#29 took care of that. As anticipated, the slow running was very satisfactory and I spent an enjoyable few minutes running the loco up and down a stretch of track. It looked great. I have one of the newer 28xx models but this old one can still hold its own and on my small layout there are no question marks over haulage. I looked forward to changing the tender coupling to a 3-link hook so that I could load up a long-ish train of South Wales mineral wagons. The next evening I came back and ran it again - still good. But I got on with other stuff and only gave it a short run. The next evening again, I couldn't resist calling up the loco and giving it another spin. As before, the slow running was great. BUT - something was a bit strange. The loco looked different. I was only watching it from a distance, but there was something about it ... something near the front. I peered closer and had a bit of a shock. The smokebox had melted. Yes, somehow I'd forgotten that there was a smoke unit in this model - a smoke unit which had been quietly receiving full DCC voltage and current the entire time I'd been testing my lovely engine. Of course I had never made much use of the smoke generator so it had dropped off my things to think about when chipping the loco. But here, for your edification, are the sad results: Close inspection revealed that the melting had begun to deform not only the smokebox/chimney, but also the boiler barrel. So any hope of simply grafting a new smokebox into place were dashed. It looked as if I had two options - bin the model, or source a new body and perform either a complete body transplant or the whole boiler/smokebox. Obviously at this point I was pretty heartbroken - in fact, in a week that had seen some other cockups, I came closer to thinking about chucking in the hobby than at any time in years. As it happened, sourcing a body turned out to be not as straightforward as I'd imagined. I drew a blank on ebay - I guess people tended to keep the bodies and dispose of the chassis, not the other way round. I also couldn't locate one from a spares dealer. The guy at the Cardoiff show, who turns up with lots of Hornby loco bodies, also couldn't help - he seemed to have everything but a 28xx. My wife suggested I put out an appeal on the forum but I wasn't hopeful that it would do much good. However, I did it anyway. And within a day I had an extremely pleasing response from forum member Richard (RCAR6015) who, it turned out, had acquired a 28xx body some years ago for a project that had not come to fruition. With the new model out, Richard now had no use for the body and was happy to let me have it. After a quick phone call it became clear that Richard would not even accept payment, even to cover postage costs. I was genuinely touched by Richard's kindness and think it says something very positive about the best aspects of a forum like this. Richard was quick off the mark and within a couple of days of our phone call, I had another 28xx body. After deliberating, I've decided that the best thing is to leave the body intact, and simply transplant all the extra detail from the melted one onto the new carcass - that it will be a lot cleaner than attempting a cut and shut, and in any case I'd have to redo the handrails if I went down that route. So the 28xx lives on, or will live on, after some surgery, and I get to keep on playing with my present, all thanks to the kindness of an Rmwebber. Thanks, Richard!

That's not the same as "model now on general release" and "model now available to all", is it?

When I go to your website, it says the model is hoped to be released in December.

King of the World - Steely Dan

As a follow-up to the above, I'm happy to report that my signal is now working properly. Although I swear I checked everything, something in my electrical supply must have been disturbed at some point because last night I swapped over a plug to run my drill, and when I popped the plug back at the end of the evening the signal came to back to life. I have since switched the power on and off several times and the signal is working as it should. Apologies to Dapol for the potential misinformation, not really helpful with a new product.

Here's my latest effort, nearly finished apart from some small decals, aerial details and a touch of weathering to bring out the panel lines: It's the Hasegawa 1/48th P 51-D Mustang as currently issued with Tuskegee decals. There are two decal options in the kit, both Tuskegee planes, but predictably I built the one which had the smutty nose art. I bought it not really knowing much about the quality of the model but it seems to be regarded as a decent rendition of a Mustang, and it went together very well apart from a few small issues which were my own fault and could easily be avoided on a second build. I reckon it took me about six weeks from start to finish, on and off, so not bad value for a kit that cost a shade under 30 pounds from Model Zone. There are some absolutely brilliant Mustang builds on the web, some of which have very complex paint schemes. I think I would quite like to build another one, perhaps trying the well-regarded Tamiya 1/48th kit for a change.

I am looking at a possible failure of the one signal I've installed so far. Switched on the layout this evening, found that the signal wasn't operating although the LED remains very dimly lit, on but much less bright than normal. I've double checked all feeds and verified that the power supply is functioning normally, so it is a bit puzzling. I'll keep poking around but I wonder if anyone else has seen the same sort of failure. Edit - rechecked all wiring, totally dead today, even the LED has gone out.

C'mon, it's obvious - cats like chasing birds = Catatonia Mulder and Scully were always getting in danger-ous situations = Catatonia Marc lives in Cardiff = Catatonia

Danger Bird - Neil Young

Fabulous, I look forward to seeing the real thing...

Always crashing in the same car - David Bowie

I'm not sure if there's enough grey paint in the world to do a Newport sky!

I do HBL as a quick fix but I would never leave it as just HBL, it's just good to get some green down quickly. I've added static and extra textures as seen in the later pics, but again it's a work in progress. I'm currently working on the "up" platform now.

I bet Wenlock was thrilled as it gave him a chance to make some more chimneys!

No, they came ready painted. I think the artist is actually Johnny from the Fast Show. Black!

Heresy!

Shrink them down to 4mm for me, will you, there's a good chap!