Friday Update: Thirteen Five Twenty-two...

Busy week here again, and it's flown by interspersed with a nice trip to play trains mid week, but with Janey on a course I had to do 3 of the days school runs and that certainly eats into 'work time'. Before I go any further, a warm thank you to all who have commented on the 'Why' post last weekend, I've really enjoyed the conversation. If you've not had a read, go take a look, and why not add your thoughts too?

An absolute pleasure to find Garden Rail on my mat, a complementary copy as I'm not a regular subscriber these days, but my article on the garden railway, my own Dyfrdwy Tramway has been treated with such care and love - it looks superb in print, thanks to Phil for making this happen. You should be able to find a copy on the newsstand, as well as in PocketMags (on the iPad). I'm hoping for a few more articles this year, I've got a few to write for CM now - I must put down the knife and brush long enough to get writing!

The Ruston LB builds are progressing with the open cab version now in primer and the cabbed example not far behind. It will be lovely to move these into the printshop where they really come alive! Still time to reserve one of these models at this years price (£1330) in next years batch, alternately I'm building a small run of Ruston 44/48s later this year, if that suits your requirements more? Same price...

On my own bench, more N gauge experiments as I look at couplings. This deserves a whole blog post on it's own once I've got some conclusions and a way forward. For now, consider me frustrated and out of ideas... the problem is the mix of scale appearance, hands free operation and ease of assembly and fitting. Nothing yet ticks all the boxes. The popular DG is close, but very fiddly, and not at all easy to mount on stock. The 6.5mm gauge version of the Greenwich that Neil Moss did for me a few years ago would be an option, if fitted with a NEM tale and a delay bar... the Micro-scale Z gauge ones would also be a good option if they came with an NEM mount, alas when mounted to the buffer beam they're just too short. More investigation required, it feels worth sorting out for myself, and then to share with you all...

A wander down at the station mid week on my way back from picking my daughter up from school and I caught this image of the Class 104/108 hybrid on the Llangollen Railway in our village. It’s lovely to see BR blue in the valley, and I’m looking forward to another ride on the train myself tomorrow.

Finally this week, a glimpse of a project to dirty up my Athearn Genesis GP38-2 that arrived at Christmas. This model is being based on a particular prototype that really did work in the maritimes, in fact I guess still could as it's in service for CN still. The paintwork is deteriorating and I've had fun replicating this in miniature. There is still work to do on this, but it's getting there. Last weekend's hopes of progressing scenic work on Beaverbrook didn't happen, as such I'm hoping perhaps this Sunday I may have the chance... this afternoon I will be on the Ffestiniog and tomorrow I'll be on the Llangollen Railway. If anyone is visiting the exhibition and wants to arrange to pop in afterwards, do get in touch. In the meantime, have a good weekend and more soon...