Week away and ByG

I've been away on hols the last week but managed to smuggle a small tool box into the luggage. I put the bare essentials in it such as a knife and cutting mat, small drill bits and archimedean drill, some files.

The box

Construction underway

The last few summer holidays I've been on I've built a loco and named them after the place we were staying so I have Staithes, Burnmouth and now Beckfoot. I pretty much finished building the loco which was a fairly straight forward build of a kit for a Southwold Railway 2-4-0. I shortened the boiler and fabricated a new smokebox out of styrene and a smokebox door casting. My version sits on a ROCO 0-6-0 chassis and so the footplate casting needed some shortening which I did by cutting a section out of the middle and glueing it back together adding some styrene strip to the edges and underside to strengthen it.

Getting there

I haven't worked out how to secure the chassis to the loco yet but other than that she is basically finished. The night we got home I gave her a waft of grey primer and painted the smokebox black so she could run in works grey at the exhibition... talking of which...

Arnold Lane Wharf in action

Beckfoot posing

The exhibition was a two day affair but unfortunately I am so stupid that I forgot about it when the family summer hols were being booked so I could only attend the Sunday, however I enjoyed myself and the layout behaved itself. There were some other very nice layouts including three other 009 ones with live steam featuring too!

When I got home there were some nameplates from Narrow Planet waiting for me, I finally finished my new Skylark, Nettie.

Went for a ride on the Ratty while on hols too