A new Terrier

 I picked this Mk1 Hornby-badged Terrier up a couple of months ago off of Marketplace from a chap down the road for the princely sum of £25. He assured me it ran; which it did... after a fashion. Visuals suggested that the wheels could be the culprit; or rather the muck on the wheels. I decided on a full strip-down and service. These models are dead easy to work on and I finished the job in under 30 minutes. The treads were fibre-brushed to a shine as were the front wiper pick-ups. The drive train was totally dried up; I guessed an age of around 20 years old and it had obviously never been touched, so motor bearings oiled, gears greased, chassis bearing faces cleaned, wheelsets back in and a drop of oil . 

A run without the body looked hopeful and with the whole thing back together and up to weight she purrs along. Do I need another Terrier? No really, but at that price she's a good spare chassis for the existing pair, or I may get around to a full detail.

Svanda at Bredgar

 

 Svanda appeared yesterday at what its essentially the final exhibition. This is due to there being nothing else in the book. Really friendly show within the Bredgar and Wormshill Light Railway site, and organised by Kerry and Kevin of Invicta Models.

The layouts are not the main attraction, sharing the attention with the main railway and a brace of other steam power on the day. This means that the audience is high on the family scale and quite transient. This means that you don't really get an exhibition 'buzz', but you do get to put the hobby in front of people who are just out for the day. We did this last year and I'll repeat my comment from then - it's clean. No piles of 'we'll get around to that later' scrap, and areas full of sleepers and rusty rail. This is Pro with a capital P. Well worth a visit and just off the M20 Jct 8.

Broken Creek

 A quick nip down the road to the ever sunny Littlehampton to snap a layout for CM. Broken Creek is very much where my head is on layouts in general: one man build/operate, simple track plan, lots of detail without getting silly and sensibly researched.  It's off to the Uckfield show in October, so the rush was on to get something done for the previous month's CM; which is where I came in. 

Saturday Ramble

 I don't do many show these days. Not sure why this is, but they do seem to be problematic at times particularly where the bump between entertainments happens. Anyway...

Rhiw2 appeared at Eastbourne for Pevensey MRC  to great applause, 'simplicity' seemed to be the key response and if conversations over the layout were an indication, there were many people inspired to build something with a similar approach. So job done there. Also good, was the real life response to the recent 009 layout-build series in RM which seems to have gone down well. Not bad for a circle of track and a siding. 

This brings me to a general question. The overall lack of invites, and/or the ability to attend if they do, is making me reassess slightly. I've been exhibiting since the early 1990s, so for a while, though this is by no means an intense lifestyle choice unlike some people I know who engineer to be out almost every weekend. That has never been for me. Couple this with a recent passing conversation with Mr. Hill and my brain asks, is it time to gently hang up the trestles? For me, at least this century, modelling has increasingly been about publishing, either in this medium off my own back, or via the press in a very fluid professional capacity. Neither of these two things have anything to do with exhibiting, excepting the blog's rather popular show reviews. Layout building of late has very much fallen into making things for other people to play with - in many cases the result is not something that I want to get anywhere near when it's finished. Is is sensible to switch gears completely, return to here much more and run with a publish-only mindset? 

Trees

 Almost ready for delivery. It's a pretty picture.