Having been very busy at work over the last couple of weeks I haven't found much time for railway modelling, however I had a day off yesterday and ticked off a few jobs from the never ending list. The first of which was to finish the wiring for the fiddle yard, this was relatively simple as I just needed to wire in a couple of section switches and a feed. I may add a couple more section breaks on the two sidings which are the full length of the board as nearly every train is about half the length of the board.
Fiddle yard during 'testing'
Clarice passing what will be the beach
The full truckle, cheese rail lorry in action. One happy result of curve easing on the new arrangement is that this peculiar thing will now happily run the length of the line.
A few weeks ago I acquired a strange plastic toy/static model of a Garratt with the vague idea of converting it for 009 use. The static wheels are to 9mm gauge but what scale the thing is supposed to be, I couldn't say. The cab doors are about the right height for a 3.5mm person to stand in them. Anyway I contemplated putting 2 of those little Japanese Tsugawa (?) chassis under it but it would require an awful lot of re building and to be totally honest I get my fill of real NG Garratts at work.
Taking it apart, several options are revealed. Use the cab and boiler bit for a conventional loco... use the cab and the water tank as a little i.c. loco... It's in a box at the moment and will probably stay that way for now. A last ditch idea was to paint it with rust and park it at the end of a siding - awaiting work.
In bits
As a little i.c.
You may have spotted in the above picture that there is a ghostly simplex too. This is a 3D print which will sit on a Portram chassis, I know I have one somewhere but I'm buggered if I can find it. I've filled the engine cover with liquid gravity and once the chassis is fitted there might be some room for a few little bits of lead. I'm not a big expert on Simplexes but it will look close enough for me.
At our recent Super Power event I invited the lovely chaps from Narrow Planet to attend and it would have been rude not to make a purchase so I bought a TR coach will I started to put together last night. Nice clean castings and some delightful cast brass buffers which I probably won't fit. It should go nicely with my little rake of 3D printed Ratty style coaches, so it will be painted in faded green and wood rather than TR red and wood. I suspect a couple more might be needed and I've always loved the TR brake van...
