Tram and van

Having ground to a halt with the wiring of the signal on 'the new bit' I felt rather disheartened and so haven't done much else for a while. However with the advent of genuinely unwatchable tele like that jungle crap and the X factory I needed something to stop my brain rotting even further.

Lights in action at the new halt...

...and at The Burning Bush pub and cottage over the line

The solution was firstly to get out the little steam tram that I made a while ago and see if it now fitted the new layout arrangements. The good news was that it nearly did and all that was stopping it was the driver and conductor who were hanging rather precariously on the outside of the tram. A simple move of them inboards and it happily trundled from end to end. I gave it the once over and decided that the printed signs on the sides didn't look very good to start with and had faded somewhat too so I replaced them with a pair of etched brass ones I had Narrow Planet make for something else which never happened. They look much better and really set off the rest of the vehicle.

Before

After

I've been sorting through my huge pile of part finished/un-started/ruined projects recently and came across a pair of Mr Rushby's delightful Darjeeling tea vans which are known as herb vans on the IoSR. He donated these two bodies some while ago as the last of the resin kits which needed some work to make them viable, however on close inspection they seem to be fine so last evening I set about getting them into traffic.

They are designed to suit a PECO n gauge van chassis but looking at them it seemed that the 009 flat wagons would be bodgeable to go under them and so with a bit of fiddling and filing that was what I did. The newly finished one has also gained vac pipes and the older one and the unfinished one will also. They will make a nice little train with the new PECO bogied brake van.