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Oh yes there is. It's the reflection of the bright sunlight fooling you or should that be iffy lighting used by a cheap photographer. Cheers Dave

Gratuitous loco shot alert. One of a number of photos taken for an article on Waton that is in the June edition of British Railway Modelling. Cheers Dave

Must be something Must be something in the air. I have a similar problem but her name is Virage with a 12 plate and I definitely can't afford her! Have a good one all. Cheers Dave

Happy Burpday to you, Happy Burpday to you, Happy Burpday dear Steeeeeewaaaaaaartttt, Happy Burpday to you. (and many more) Have a good one (and all the rest of you ER lot) Cheers Dave (just off to test drive an Aston Martin)

Morning All, Full set of threatening oktas in place hereabouts. Probably start to leak when I get to the golf course this afternoon just as they have done for the last couple of weeks. Drought my a***. Gordon what you haven't spotted is that your dogs are using phsycological tactics against you. Nasty mean owners laying hard floors everywhere so the poor little dog has to carry its own cushion everywhere. Clearly not very bright though given there's a rug on the floor round the corner! Have a good one all. Cheers Dave

As I have just had the confirmation docs for Waton's next outing (June 2/3rd at DEMU Showcase in Burton) it's probably about time I tackled some of the snag list from its first outing. There's also quite a lot to do in terms of scenery and titivation. Five weeks should be plenty of time, gulp! I've been doing more work on the road bridge at the righthand end to try and disguise the exit to the fiddleyard. Cliched or what? No bus on the bridge (yet!). Quite a lot of greenery has been added in terms of trees and bushes to break things up a bit. Not sure whether I like it yet though. The fencing on the bridge is bits of brass wire soldered up and the road and pavement surfaces are from Scalescenes. This is actually quite a tricky corner to sort out as the original challenge plan has left me with some nasty tight corners to hide. I could go mad and rip up the track and re-lay it as with the fiddleyard boards there is scope for exiting at a much straighter angle on the Leicester route. Not a job to tackle 5 weeks from a show though. I also managed to knock a couple of electrical gremlins on the head today so I seem to be making progress! Cheers Dave

I'm definitely not getting any older and I still haven't learned to behave. Why is it when I get up in the morning I seem to be shaving my father's face in the mirror? Cheers Dave

Morning All, Eight seriously leaking oktas in place. Upside to it is that I can't mow the lawn! Very glad to hear that Robbie is well on the way to recovery Tony. Best of luck with Lukey Gordon. Need to do a bit of baseboard building today for our club layout assuming I can dodge the rain to get the timber from my workshop to the garage where the band saw is. What fun. Have a good one all. Cheers Dave

If you are using plaster bandage or a homebrew of this ilk i.e. kitchen roll soaked in sloppy plaster mix, why not just use scrunched up paper. The layout isn't being transported so you don't need the extra strength of metal mesh and the paper is cheap! Cheers Dave

I really would prefer you didn't do that! Can't claim to have been the first person to come up with the idea but at one time my salary was largely being paid by two groups of companies, one which used predictive dialers (the machines that pick your number and dial for the annoying salesmen) to cold call folks and the other being telephone companies using voice response units (those really annoying automated voices) to screen out unwanted calls. We estimated that several million calls a year were being made between two sets of machines without any humans ever being involved. The same technology was used for both and guess who developed the machines? Yes, I really hate it when I get an automated voice picking up a call from me or a cold call salesman. Doh! Cheers Dave (cross legged and sheepish)

Morning All, Happy birthday Jam. Go steady on the loopy juice! Glad to hear Robbie is recovering well Tony. For some reason I woke in dark mood today missing our old mutt. Strange how these shaggy old dogs get to you. Off for a round of golf before the weather turns nasty. Have a good one all. Cheers Dave

That 'aint gonna happen if you spend the morning swanning around the country in your motor and cadging cups of tea! Morning All, 'tis raining in these parts. Shouldn't complain as it will at least keep the golf course green. Downside is the lawn will grow and I'll have to mow it. Have a good one all. Cheers Dave

Give Gordon a shout he's probably got a few old baseboards that'll keep you going. Afternoon All. Now, back to chopping down the dead tree at the end of the garden... Cheers Dave

As ever when there is lots to do I get distracted. Been having a bit of a photo snapping session over the last couple of days. Blagged the wife's Nikon D3100 and rigged up a pair of low-energy photofloods to see what could be done. Here's a few shots that didn't make the cut... The last one highlights a few bits that need repairing/improving on the station building! Now I must get on and tackle that snagging list. Or maybe do some more scenic tinkering... Cheers Dave

Note to self, tapping your foot during concerts really screws it up for others

Hi Dave, good to see you in these parts. Sometimes you just have to hold something in the Eastbound goods relief to provide interest for the punters so... Cheers Dave

Morning All. Thanks for the wishes. Very empty house at the moment till we get used to the new regime. Went to a Jack Bruce concert yesterday evening. Pretty naff and not aided by a sound engineer that had things set up so that everything was a moderate level mush. Why is it most sound engineers seem to be deaf? Result was too much time spent in the bar and now, as the hangover kicks in big time, I remember I'm supposed to play 18 holes of golf this morning. Might not be too impressive! You've forgotten Gordon, Dd lives in a more refined part of the principality. Only the females wear wellies! On a more PC note, apparently ewe can never have too much RAM. Have a good one all. Cheers Dave

Morning All, Glad to hear some good news on the employment front. Hope all proceeds well on the health front over the next few days. Don't get me started on fuel prices... Not a great day here unfortunatley as we started the day by taking my best friend on his last trip to the vet. Never thought I would be so attached to a shaggy old dog! Henry 1999-2012

Waton has been sat gathering dust in a corner of the shed since October so it really is about time something was done with it. There are a couple of things on the agenda which are focussing the mind. A possible article is in the offing and the layout is due out to the DEMU showcase in June. Obviously someone needs to get moving and work needs to be prioritised. There's a snagging list from the outing in October which should be cleared up first. Yeah right! All that stuff is to do with tricky electrickery and mechanical nonsense. Best plan is to ignore it and get on with some scenic titivation. The scenic break at the Eastern end on the Leicester line didn't get completed inside the challenge deadline and the layout went to both the RMWeb open day and the Portsmouth bash with a ghostly white mock-up bridge in place. Time to sort it. Here's a pic of the start of construction showing where it sits: It's a crude card construction covered in Scalescenes brick paper with a few custom texture details. Not sure it's in any way prototypical but it's based on what I can make out from Google Earth of a bridge to the East of Water Orton. Lots of work to do yet but I'm enthused again! Cheers Dave

Morning All, Don't seem to have posted in ERs recently. Plenty of oktas in evidence today. Have a good one all. Cheers Dave Nope. Looked under the bonnet (flappy bit at the pointy end). Looked in the boot (flappy bit at the blunt end). No engine! As it needs its biannual service I think I'll take it to the garage or on second thoughts have the man come and collect it.

While I don't have an O gauge layout myself the club I belong to does and there are some folks who are very keen on 7mm. Being my normal cheapskate self the prices of O gauge stock (and everything else) scares the whassanames out of me so I have been lured to the dark side, ebay. Many times! I have a number of O gauge locos including this rather nice M7... She was a Tuesday afternoon finisher with a largish, though cheap for an O guage loco, starting bid. I took a punt and put a snipe on for the minimum and she was mine! She arrived in a rather delapidated state from the infamous auction site and had clearly seen better days. Some botched repairs by someone had to be undone meaning I also had to repaint parts of the loco and so she was weathered to look pretty grotty to hide the nasties. Underneath was a very nicely made loco that runs very well. All she needs is a train. She's not pull/push fitted so a rake of Mk1s in BR(S) green would do the job... I could have gone out and found some coaches ready made, they come up on ebay fairly regularly and often advertised by members of the Gauge O Guild in their magazine. Too rich for my blood though! There are cheap secondhand Lima options as well but they wouldn't cut the mustard. The only option left is to build from kits. There have been a number of different kits around and there are at least 3 different manufacturers still in production. The easiest and most expensive option would be to pick up "Just Like The Real Thing" kits and indeed for my 3rd coach I did just that. Pretty simple to build as the major bodywork components are plastic or resin and the detail levels are high. I bought a BSK kit (corridor brake second/standard) from the companies ebay outlet and saved a couple of quid. Apart from missing a few bits of brass etch, which were supplied next day following a phone call, everything was plain sailing. The interior is built up on the floor of the coach from various brass and plastic bits held together with super glue. There's a fair bit of detail including a ton of stuff in the guards compartment. I admitted defeat in trying to assemble the wire mesh document pigeon holes out of fiendishly thin nickelsilver! The bogies are whitemetal and not particularly clean castings but actually make up into reasonable structures with a bit of movement in the axleboxes to cope with track irregularities. Strangely no brake shoes/blocks. The underframe is assembled from brass etches and whitemetal castings. Not overly difficult apart from bending the long truss members to form the 'L' shape. It all makes up into a nice coach. Definitely has presence. I needed another BSK as most of the Southern Region coach sets had a sequentially numbered pair. In fact I had acquired a set of brass etches from ebay some time before buying the JLTRT kit. The etches were labeled as Acorn kits "First Class Coaches". I had a full set, body, interior, underframe and bogies. All looked really nice on ebay and when I opened the box. However, on starting to assemble the thing a few bits didn't actually fit and also some of the order of construction seemed to be impossible. Eventually I found a little statement in the rough instruction sheets along the lines of "if this pre-production kit is a success we may put it into production". Ah! So this kit has been a challenge. The interior of this coach is all brass except for the fairly crude plastic seating strip. Practically no interior detail at all and in fact there were several internal partitions not provided for. The bogies are again whitemetal and the parts very nearly fitted together though not in the way the instructions might suggest! The underframe and body are brass as well and with some imagination could be soldered together. Much much cruder than the JLTRT kit. I did eventually get thing thing assembled but of course there is always a twist. The body is double skinned and you are supposed to sandwich the glazing between the two layers and secure it by running the door handles, grab handles and destination board brackets (brass wire and imagination) through all three and soldering. OK, so if I do that I have to prime and paint it with the glazing in situ? I think not. Also the roof is supposed to "clip or glue" between the two side skins. I suppose it might if it were the right shape! Eventually I primed and painted then glazed then soldered the roof. This meant I had to carefully scrape away a small amount of paint to solder then cover up again. Not easy and it's a bit crude. So can it get sillier than trying to make a decent coach out of a set of prototype etches? You bet. Another ebay "bargain" that came my way, albeit very cheaply, was an Eames coach body set. This is basically some bits of wood, pre-cut cardboard sides and a shaped laminated cardboard roof. The kit wasn't dated but given that the instructions weren't clear what coach type they made and alluded to "the latest Mk1 coach type" it had to come from the late 50s or early 60s. In fact the kit would make an SO (second/standard open) or possibly a TSO. No underframe, bogies or castings with this one! Heres the sides, ends and floor gluing with the interior bits laid out. There was a generous, if rather faded, one sheet of instructions. Basically said "It's a coach. Stick it together". I did just that and primed it... Then gave it a blast of green... The bogies are "EasiBuild" plastic jobbies that are very easy to build, cheap and don't look too bad. Most of the previous work was done a year or so ago and in the last couple of weeks I have finally got round to completing them. The SO now has a scratch built underframe made from bits of brass, plastic and various spare castings and all 3 coaches have had their handles and end detail added and a final paint and weathering job. Here's how they stand now... The JLTRT BSK. Going to have to fix that bowed roof! The Acorn BSK. Finally the Eames SO. They are numbered as part of set 881 using Fox transfers. A little more weathering and attention to glazing and they'll be ready for service. First outing will probably be with the club layout Abbotstone at Wycrail in the autumn. Oh of course I've acquired a semi-assembled kit for a CK (corridor composite) from ebay recently. You guessed it, it's a mess! Cheers Dave

What, no Bipper? Cheers Dave

No half measures as usual then Matey. Obviously some of us would just have found some gash old length of 2x1 kicking about. Wouldn't have been able to boast about the size of your tool then though! Good to see more progress. Cheers Dave

Morning All, If we are wiped out by a meganormous solar flare, how will we know? Have a good one all. Cheers Dave

Morning All, Cloudy and dreary in these parts. Not a lot happening and with a creaking back no chance of me screwing all day or banging on the ceiling (unlike some of our number). Ally Pally is a distinct possibility. Did someone mention beer? Have a good one all. Cheers Dave