A quiet couple of months, part of the reason for the hiatus in blogs, but again with the benefit of considerable foresight things will improve. May is when we have a AGM, and faced with increased costs (electricity and rent) we voted for a modest increase in subscriptions. In other news, work on club and members layouts continues with much effort focused on Evercreech New and Heyno Junction.
Work on the renovation of 7mm scale St Martin’s Wharf continues, and it’s excellent news that Bob Alderman’s lovely brace of Model T railbuses was in the St. Martins Wharf stock box all along – cunningly disguised as something wrapped in bubble wrap. Dave H has fitted a DCC chip in preparation for Taunton and our postponed Open Day. Dave will be fitting the rest of this interesting loco collection with DCC chips over the coming weeks, and Peter C is trying to sort out the wayward trailing axle on the rather nice model of ‘Severn’ (I believe it is a scratchbuilt Severn & Wye prototype) so we can run that too. Most of the stock is in good condition despite its long storage. The layout itself has been running quite happily and (you may wish to look away now) – most of the rat damage has been repaired. St Martin’s Wharf is easy to transport, interesting for us to operate, and we think people will be pleased to see it on the circuit again..
Verwood (set after the war) will need box and mineral wagons in reasonable numbers. Steve saw these on Ebay, but can’t claim them as any sort of rescue (other than from the 00 and P4 mobs) as these LMS vans were all runners and nicely weathered in BR Bauxite, although the underframes could do with more rusty goodness. From the same seller (and stable) were three superbly weathered EM gauge mineral vans that he would also have liked for Verwood, but sadly they went for what he calls ‘silly money’.
Yeovil Model Railway Group (YMRG) 