Ted, the lines odd job man examines the latest arrival for use on the estate railway at "Hornby". A small box van obtained from the Far Tottering Railway.
In reality, built from 1/16 ply and balsa strip on an old Hornby wagon chassis, roughly to 1/32 scale, the design is based on one of Rowland Emett's drawings. Next on the stocks is a cattle/sheep van based (very loosely) on an Irish 3 foot item.
After a bit of a hiatus I've managed a couple of weeks work on Whimsey. The ground base got painted and the initial coat of flock grass has been planted. For photographic purposes I've placed some of the buildings and figures in place to see the effect.
The, in the corner behind the barn is a large rabbit hole in the hillside, with appropriate resident standing outside. There will, eventually, be a suitable young lady hiding in the (not there yet) trees nearby.
Good morning everybody, on this second day of the new year. I hope you all get a better one than that which has just past. Here at Joppy Towers we have had upheavals galore, starting with a move of house, downsizing to a one bedroom bungalow from a two bed/2 recep house, with all the accompanying trauma of deciding what has to go and what we can keep. Fortunately we have a wide hallway so have fitted waist high bookcases along the length (good old IKEA) and kept nearly all of the library. About 12 of those cardboard veg boxes you get at the supermarket have been filled and sent of to an auction house, while others went to the various charity shops. How soon before I want to refer to one of them?.
The other major influence was the diagnosis, early in the year, of MrsJ having some impossibly named disease that would drastically reduce life expectancy, not something we wanted to hear when we'd both hoped for a long retirement! After a year of tests , some more intrusive than others, the professional still aren't sure if she has it or not, but can't track down the reasons for her condition. We take it as it comes with weekly hospital trips until something is discovered.
So not much hobby time over all. I seem to get about half an hour a day in the shed on four days a week. Two full days and an afternoon are taken with baby sitting our 18month old grandson, who is now getting to be curious and very mobile. At least his favourite word is "TRAIN".
Over the Christmas period we were stuck at home, so I dug out my little lockdown railway project and managed to do a bit more to it. This is the state today, scenery is complete and has received a preliminary painting. Iwish I'd treated the road differently as the filler I used is very bumpy. A card base would have been better.
Just a couple of photos to show current progress on the 7mm scale narrow gauge shelf layout. The track plan is based on the Eastgate Tramway by the late Phillip Moss but is flipped end-to-end. Running from a small station on the left to a hidden siding on the right, which is behind a low relief warehouse of the Lincolnshire Egg Packers. Now I have to work out a wiring diagram and start laying the track.
As Mrs J has kept me busy gardening these last few weeks of sunshine, progress in the shed has been slow. However, I have managed to get the boards for the top shelf 0:16.5 layout ready. I had two boards three feet by fourteen inches already, earmarked for another project, and as these didn't quite go the whole length of the shelf I fabricated a shorter lenghth for the right end. You can just about see the joints in the picture. The hole in the end is to allow future access to a fiddle yard if the layout ever gets to a show.
The back scene, or sky, had to be repainted. I tried to match the end to the old one but it failed, so now the sky is basicaly a very light grey with faint tinges of blue.
Now to work out the tracl layout.
At last, after nearly four months of intermittent work, the railway shed is ready for layout construction to begin.
Here we have a picture of its present situation, taken from the doorway. The main worksurface, on top of old kitchen units, is to be the foundation for the 009 layout baseboards, while the shelf to the right is going to hold a small 0:16.5 7mm scale layout. At least, that's the idea. The cupboards underneath hold a multitude of boxes full of the essential stuff needed for modelling. Kits, paints, tools, old cardboard, brickpapers, etc.. This includes a box full of old Superquick kits and a batch of even older Bilteezi card kits that may actually get made! A number of baseboards can be seen on the worktop, ready for putting in place. Now for a track plan.
Well, what a year it has been, with one thing and another. I won't bore you with the shenanigins around Covid19 that affected both MrsJ and myself, suffice to say we have survived the various lockdowns and both had our first vaccination, so are feeling reasonably chipper. The other major event has been the search for a new home. MrsJ decided that we needed to move nearer our daughter and our grandchildren so a move some 30 miles away, to Sudbury, has been on the cards for some months now. What our son feels about this (he only lives some ten minutes away with his family) is unrecorded, but I was overruled in the decision.
We've finally found and organised a new home. A small bungalow in a pleasant quiet estate, seemingly full of elderly residents, on the edge of Sudbury and are moving tomorrow. Actually, most of our possessions have gone bit by bit over the last three weeks while we went over to prepare the place, and only the larger furniture bits and pieces need to go. At the moment our new 'library' looks like this:
