Congratulations to Simon K on an excellent article in the August issue of “Railway Modeller” (published in July), featuring his S&D garden layout as “Layout of the Month”!

Allan has been productive on a number of fronts:

He has completed these lovely 7mm scale narrow guage lime tipplers for Evercreech New from Smallbrook kits.

This beautifully weathered 7mm scale goods shed is for a layout of Lyme Regis for David S.

The 7mm LMS brake van was built from a Slaters kit and Allan modelled the interior – crazy as it’ll never be seen? Nope, (editor) ‘cos we know it’s there!

This 7mm loco is Allan’s latest attempt – and possibly his last – at building a loco! It is a Slaters Johnson 1P 0-4-4 tank engine, now nearly ready for the paint shop. There were so many problems building this kit, not helped by the wrong gearbox and motor, the wrong hornblocks, the wrong instructions, then the wrong gearbox and motor replacement! Eventually David S gave Allan one of his – an ABC gearbox and – lo! – it was the right fit.

Allan then went onto report his acquisition of a scratchbuild LMS 2P to help satisfy his thirst for engines that ran on the S&D. Jim (an enthusiastic proponent of the ‘Senile Scale’ who also models in 2mm finescale) reckons Allan has been so badly bitten by the 7mm bug that he should consider selling his excellent 4mm 00 gauge layout Kingsferry.

Dave H has produced this wagon in 7mm scale 0 Gauge. It’s a bog standard Slaters PO wagon lettered using POWSides transfers, but at least of local interest! There have been commercial models released of this wagon in very lurid reds, but Dave mixed a guess at ‘London Red’ which was a crimson lake brightened up with some Post Office red, which seems more likely for the 1900s. A bit of light weathering and there’s a wagon likely to have been seen in most of Somerset before the Great War. The transfers took a year to arrive!