Long Time no action!

Well it's been a while since I updated this, personal and family reasons mainly! Since my last post I became the proud owner of a Gn15 layout, which was originally "Woods Shropshire Beers" with a couple of sidings and sheds and a canal scene with a narrow boat in front. I decided to move the location to one in this area, selecting Pallingham Quay at the southern end of the Way and Arun navigation. Beer gave way to Cider, and the change was complete! After showing it at the South Downs Area group of the 7mm NGA open day in Pagham I decided it needed some upgrades to the 10+ year old track work. Nature intervened and following a roof leak in a storm much of the scenery was  damaged beyond repair, and the track started to rust!

As another club member had, at this time, set the ground rules for a modular layout system I decided to use the same specifications for my G scale 16.5mm gauge layout as set for the 0-16.5 modular system. Between bouts of foul weather I have managed to get the new baseboards built, and the new canal cut made, and after buying a 3rd loco (kit) from the wonderful Narrow Gauge South West show at Shepton Mallet. I've been working on rolling stock as well. (The kit, a new Gn15 from the house of  Steve Bennet's Sidelines range, is a wonderfully cast resin model of a light industrial minimum gauge loco called Dragonfly.)

In between working outside on the baseboards I've also been catching up on some of my other projects, including a couple of DCC 0-16.5 diesels, one freelance/scratch build based on the Bachmann 0-6-0 diesel shunter and the other a Boulder Valley "Kit Bash" on the chassis of a Bachmann H0 US diesel switcher.

 Both are pretty near ready to paint, and I hope to undercoat them this week. I also got a Backwoods VB steam tram loco at the Erith show, along with the matching tender as well as an On30 Bachmann Diesel Mechanical which is the donor for the chassis. The tender was dead easy, but the loco is a lot more complex and I'm waiting for a 10BA tap ordered from flea bay to start the build.