Re-tyred

Both Lima 31s have had traction tyres fitted now and run a lot better. Still some work to do but hopefully they will both play a part in operations on Knell Lane.

Evening freight

The entire current active freight fleet in one train!

Bill and Ben

We've delved into eBay for the latest locomotive purchases and bought 2 old Lima Class 31s. Now they are very crude compared to modern locos though they do both work however they wheel spin like crazy and some new traction tyres are needed. Hopefully one can become a regular loco on the layout or at the very least give me some experience in modifying and improving rolling stock. Something i don't really want to do to my new stuff, especially the locos, as they are just too nice straight out of the box. The 2 31s are identical (so one will need renumbering at some stage) and i call them Bill and Ben!

New stuff!

Some new "toys" arrived on Friday. Two new wagons including this rather lovely Grampus, the extra Kadee couplers i needed to make the full switch, and a signal kit.

Coupling up

While the default N gauge couplings work fine in general operation they do have a drawback i have found on curved track where its difficult to uncouple or recouple stock. Now this is a bit of a problem as my MPD solely consists of curved sidings! I've therefore begun a trial with Kadee/knuckle couplers which i had 4 of. Now i can't use these universally as some stock (most of the wagons) do not have NEM sockets and can't easily change their couplers without surgery which a) i don't want to do and b) the knuckle couplers arn't cheap and i can't afford to change everything!

So if i do decide to go with knuckle couplers, which seem to work great at coupling and recouping on curves, i will operate a mixture of knuckle and default couplings. It could be split like this:

Locomotives / Coaching Stock - knuckle
Multiple Units / Wagons - default

I will of course need 2-3 wagons as translator vehicles with different couplers at each end. I think it will be doable from both an operational and financial point of view though i shall continue trials for a few more days before deciding for good. Here we see the Class 22 and the CCV coupled up with the knuckle couplings.

Property portfolio

After quite a delay, mostly caused by the small fact of binning the old layout and starting from scratch, i've completed the 2 N gauge building kits i had outstanding. I've also taken my paint brush to the original 2 houses. They are all looking pretty good now...Here we see 2 house blocks, some shops and 2 lineside huts which will be put on the MPD (or maybe 1 there and 1 in the station area).

(Not) Swift job

I suppose its humorous that Project #070 took a long time to complete when it was a Supermarine Swift. Well its all done now, not quite the best model i've done but not bad. Now to do some buildings for the model railway...

Multiple unit fest

All 3 of our multiple units lined up at Knell Lane buffers. The 122 seems OK now, the derailing problem might be caused by one of the bogies catching on the body not the coupling. A bit of wriggling seems to have solved it for now.

DMU+DMU

The whole point of the Class 122 dummy was to allow for trains like this...

New DMU!

We welcomed some new rolling stock to the layout today, a Class 122 DMU. However there was something different about this DMU, although the lights came on there was no movement. Its an unpowered dummy in other words! The 122 DMU will be used as hauled stock to augment the (powered) DMU and also to re-enact stock transfers. The 122 looks great though has a problem with derailments but that looks like being caused by the coupler snagging on the buffers. By bending the coupling downwards slightly it seems to fix the problem though i still have more tests to perform.