A Touch of the Hiltons

 Look, I know most of the wheels aren't on the rails...

I just plonked it there. 

What you can't see is that, sat at my desk, the module and loco are glimpsed from the side of my eye, at the very limit of my peripheral vision.

I can't see the shadow detail the photo shows, and sat here, the wall behind it has a luminous glow that is 3D.

It wasn't the purpose of the Kato module; it was just an experiment in creating a windblown riverbank. 

But it is making me think. It is taking me back to Saturday mornings at Victor's, with my ex-CPO, as a new world of modelling opened up in front of me

An Instant Railway

Well, sort of. I think I've mentioned that Issy had half a plastic pallet and some artificial grass left over from building a poodle washing station. These were sequestered away with the intention to build a quick layout for the grandchilren

There were two problems, though. The resulting baseboard was too narrow to fit in a circuit of Faller track, and there was nowhere in the garden where it could be safely set up away from those poodles.

Then, over eighteen months after we moved here, and as we began to tackle the seriously overgrown borders, I realised there was a ready-built raised bed running alongside one of the garden walls.. In the long term, this will become a proper 16mm line of some sort. It just happens to be the same width as the half-pallet, and there is a suitable access point that is wide enough to get it in and out of place.

That left the issue of track, solved by using Loco Remote's printed Jubilee track.

As always, the service from Chris was excellent, and I even had an old station building to hand that was already ageing in the garden (In other words, I'd forgotten it was there)

It is there if you look very closely!

So, an instant railway!


Well, not quite. The track isn't intended as a play item, so I need some form of trackbed it can be attached to. I thought I had something stashed in the garage, but I think that made a trip to the recycling depot. And I need to build the PS Models stock that I bought two years ago....

A 40th BIrthday

 Not mine, that was a long time ago, celebrated in Bristol, and like most of my birthdays was a bit of a disaster.

No, this weekend was the 40th birthday of the Rudyard Lake Steam Railway, and I never really need an excuse to visit it.. Especially as it was a chance to see many locos from the line's past. As always, it was a fun day. Sadly, I lost a lot of valuable time because Issy insisted that the poodles, and my mother came to, and that she needed a bacon bap before we did anything else. The Station Cafe does do quite a good one. 

The result was I only got ninety minutes to take photos, and to chase trains.