General Update

OK. I will admit defeat with Seafoam for this year. Not really sure why but they all got to about 2cm then that was it turned red and zippo!

Never mind will try again next year.

On a brighter note I have completed a kit bash on a 30 year old Pola Kwik Western station into something more English as a terminus and headquarters for the Riber Valley Railway.
The first pictures are as it was held together by Blutak as a demo and then pictures of the completed article with roofs & gutters from Wills Kits

Growing Own Update

Not sure what is going on now, but thought it worthy of an update. The planted out seedlings either turned red or died away. Not very promising!. I then put the remainder outside in the sunshine still in their seed tray and these too turned red. Some are showing new growth from the bottom in green.
I did read somwhere that not a lot happens until they are nearly ready to flower then they grow rapidly. So I am not yet sure whether I have a disaster on my hands or not!!

Growing Your Own - Potting up

Just a quick "sea foam" update. Six weeks after planting I potted up some of the seedlings this weekend. They are still too many in each pot but it allows for a few fatalities and they will be thinned later. Currently in the shade for a few days whilst they recover before they go out into the sunshine. Couple of pictures below:

The coal train cometh!

Been doing a bit of rolling stock construction, bashing my supply of Triang TT grain hoppers into bogie coal wagons. The conversion method came from Andy Elms on www.ngrm-online.com .

The end result is below needing just vacuum pipes and weathering to complete.

I then did the other 5 seen below in a "superpower" line up behind "Manifold"

Growing Your Own

Having read a bit about growing your own trees I thought a bit of forward planning was in order. So about 3 weeks ago I planted some sea foam seeds to how I get on through the summer. I will update as the season progresses but this is a piccie after 3 weeks.

The Real Thing

Bit of a catch up here. The family spent the May day holiday on Dad's train weekend in Snowdonia. the primary reason being the gala on the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway where I used to volunteer over 30 years ago (I was only 16!!) I have to say the team have made a fantastic job of the place with the restorations and the museum building being superb and great value for money. The highlight being the visiting Baldwin and the launch of the fantastic Buffet Car. It was also great to meet a couple of people from all those years ago. I have attached a couple of pictures below:





I then had a mooch round the Porthmadog Model railway exhibition which provided more inspiration and the following day rode the Welsh Highland down to Beddgelert which is a truely spectacular extension

"Manifold" is outshopped

I have managed to complete my first locomotive for the Riber Valley Railway a diesel electric locomotive named Manifold. This is my first attempt at Kitbashing and this is a fairly drastic butchering of the Dapol Railbus kit mounted on an elderly but unused Piko chassis which I have had in a drawer for several years.

Its not perfect but for a first try I am pretty chuffed.

Sometime in the future the railbus will be attacked again to produce a version of the diesel railcars found on the truely magnificent County Gate model set on the Lynton & Barnstaple.

However that is a way down the road as apart from anything else I need to build a layout to run things on.

The ex works pictures are below.