Large and Little

The visit of the The Summit to St Neots was most enjoyable, and we received a lot of appreciate commentsfrom stewards and visitors alike, though no silverware for the first time with this layout.  We also had a most interesting (and at least sort of appropriate) guest loco on the Sunday morning, which oddly considering the lack of catenary also ran extremely well on its own!

Setting up such a large layout on an earth floor was certainly a challenge with a great deal of packing being required for the build.

As planned after St Neots and prior to our visit to Aylesbury Rail-Ex only the fiddle yard for The Summit has been re-erected and the new Evercreech New (EN) boards were moved into their relative positions next to the EN old boards now on their new steel legs. From the pictures you can see the relative heights of the large boards to the EN station boards – this being to  cater for the full height of the eleven arch Prestleigh Viaduct.  The gaps between the fiddle yard and the new EN boards will be filled with plain 4ft base boards at each side though they could eventually represent Cannards Grave cutting at one end and the short cutting with the three arch stone bridge just before Evercreech Junction at the other.

This a model of the area around Prestleigh. The heights are exaggerated on the model.  Knowing the area well there is much to commend the selected route of the S&D Bath extension in very difficult terrain!  Once the current baseboard of Heyno Junction is completed we will concentrate our efforts on Evercreech New.

Radcliffe Street (RS) was exhibited at the Yeovil Model Show at Bucklers Mead School Yeovil on Saturday (24th March).  Robin and Dave S arrived at about 9am with RS, closely followed by Nigel, and we set up the layout quite quickly – small layout you see.   Apart from plugging a wire from the router into the Z21 in the wrong hole – soon corrected – we were up and running well before opening time at 10am. The operators, Nigel, Bob O, Simon W and Dave S were soon operating the layout from the other side of the room and outside the window as well as close by to RS.   There were some problems with points and loco settings, but as it was RS’s first outing it did OK.   Nigel has a snags list that we will need to work through.   We were the only ‘railway related’ exhibitors at the show.  Lots of planes and boats and Star Wars models and figures and plastic kits galore and paint. The standard of modelling was high.  There was interest from Joe Public in RS but whether we get any inquiries about visiting CS2 remains to be seen.  By about 4:30pm, after dropping RS off at CS2, we were at home.  Ahh, the advantages of a small layout but not the spectacle of a large one.

It looks like Tim, is up for taking Gasworks to the Gaugemaster’s open days (1/2 Sept) with support from Bob O.  Another two operators and the trip is a goer.  Dave S will be going in the other direction to Telford with St. Martin’s Wharf.