Froxington stock

The Froxington stock has returned from Wiltshire. It hasn't improved with age, but I did dump a couple of items on the AoC to see how they looked.

I never need to buy anything again.

A few years ago I cleared out a lot of the modelling stuff and moved most of it into three large boxes. That to some people may be quite a small amount. Indeed there is one chap I know with a whole room full of Scandinavian RTR in boxes. These three boxes are stashed in the eaves and only pulled out when there is a major layout building in process.

I'd rummaged through these boxes in the last couple of weeks to find bits and pieces for Rhiw (Rhew Deri) and made a mental note to sort through it all.

I won't list all the things I found, but I sat on the bed and pondered that apart from buying 'filler' materials like plasticard and glue et al, I could spend a least a decade just modelling from what's in the boxes. The above is the built stock from Froxington , the EM chassis for a GER Y6 and a 5.5mm scale 40HP Kerr Stuart. This from one ice cream tub and one marge tub. Maybe I'll rebuild Froxington one day, or maybe I'll take the spud drives from the locos and fit them to the tram kits that I moved upteen time in a hour.

There is much to do and much to do it with. Rhiw has had more cash spent on it than any other project in recent history and quite frankly I wonder why when I have enough to do from these three boxes.

Novington Pits

In an effort to keep things tidy and as a follow-on from the last post here's the Schoma on it's intended home. Novington Pits was very much an experiment. I'd got interested in 14mm gauge via Roy Link's Review and thought to have a go. I didn't have the cash for some of his more expensive kits, but could run to a couple of Wrightlines spuds. For the unaware these are basically a 24.5 Tenshodos cast in white metal with the motor mounted on it's edge to allow either 14 or 16.5mm gauge. This makes them taller which is OK for the 7mm industrials which they are intended. The photo (the only one I have from 1996) shows the unfinished layout: a mix of MDF and ply, and track soldered up from copper-clad and code 80 rail to suggest Hudson Jubilee track. The wagons are card on top of 3mm scale w/m wagon chassis. The layout was tossed at the public twice then quietly abandoned. Even with the extra weight of the casing, the spuds still have the warp-factor acceleration of the Tenshodos, sharing the same motor and direct 1:20 or less gearing. I learnt all the lesson here that I should have applied, and didn't, to Froxington a decade later. That being that spud drives and me don't get on. All the stock is still in existence except Pete Smith's battery electric kit which has disappeared.