Christmas and train sets, ( Take 2 )

For the past couple of weeks I've not made much progress on the layout, in fact until yesterday it was a tight squeeze to enter the railway room as I've been working on a simple first train set for two of our grandsons.  Its only a simple oval with a passing loop and siding but it will enable them to have some fun and hopefully they will be bitten by the model railway bug, if so then the layout can easily be extended.  Its a long time since I've laid Hornby track and once it was all in place it obviously needed testing.  Now despite having recently purchased a rolling road the opportunity to test some of my yet to be converted '00' models was too good to miss, so out they came and I have to admit that I had a fantastic time watching various locos going around in circles.  But what amazed me was the quality of the running which was superb considering that I was only using a simple Hornby transformer / controller, locos could easily be brought down to a crawl and realistic stops and starts were possible with no trouble whatsoever, the 4mm modeller has never had it so good.

Anyway moving on, I nipped into the local model shop the other day to purchase some bits and pieces, trade was brisk and a chap in front of me spent £400 in one go then placed an order for a further £75 worth of goods, so you can imagine how I felt when I parted with a miserly £28.  The owner of the shop has become a close friend and told me he his stock was flying off the shelves so it looks like the Christmas train set is doing very well which is excellent news.  He also had an early Christmas present for me in the form of an old Lima Railcar....

I bought this none runner for its body which will be needed for a future project but two motor brushes later, a wheel clean and a spot of lubrication saw it whizzing around the grandsons layout, not bad for fifteen notes and around an hours work.  The old Lima 'Pancake' motor bogie is not as bad as some would have you believe or perhaps I've just been lucky?

Anyway enough waffle lets take a look at a few trains at Llangunllo.........

For the latest operating session I fast forwarded to the 60's and the first train to arrive was the milk empties hauled by D6331.  She is still ex works and happily gliding around on the original Dapol wheels which have have simply been pulled out to EM gauge.

Once clear of the point in front of the signal box the train will set back into the siding and be propelled down to the dairy.

In the meantime a Class 121 single car unit had arrived with a local passenger train.  I'm thinking about converting this model to a 122 but have more than enough on my workbench at the moment.

With the milk tanks safely out of the way the signal dropped and the 121 departed for Llanbister Road.  Such a shame that the backscene isn't a touch higher but there you go, yet another lesson learned for the future.