Fairlight Works

Official blog of the High Weald Light Railway (1977) Co. Ltd.

Trigger's Broom

meta model-railways

New blog, old posts. Is it still the same website if you change everything apart from the contents?

For ... reasons I had to move web hosts (including all the domain and email config for Narrow Planet, fun times) so I took the opportunity to rebuild this long-neglected blog. If it's of any interest at all it now uses Eleventy and Tailwind running on Vercel, instead of Wordpress and was a learning exercise as much as anything.

I also believe in the permanence of the web so I didn't want to just turn the thing off and succumb to link rot. Maybe I should start updating here again? Who knows!

Lockdown layout

2020, as you're probably aware, has been a weird old year. I count myself as fortunate that my day job is (currently) fairly secure although as I write this Lockdown 2 is fast approaching to get in the way of the Christmas sales period. The side-hustle has also been keeping me busy, and with the traditional Autumn exhibition season being replaced by virtual events we have some product announcements we would have done in person ready to go - particularly for the newest bit, Planet Industrials.

I did start a small 009 layout (seen above) as a modelling project during the spring but this fizzled out when the desk it was set up on was requisitioned for home schooling. Perhaps with the winter drawing in I should get on with it, it would give me something to write about here at least.

Next year it looks like I need to move house, find larger premises for NP and keep the other plates spinning, all in uncertain conditions. Should be a fun ride!


Whoops

OO industrial model-railways

Weathered Andrew Barclay

Andrew Barclay 0-4-0ST by Hatton’s. Weathering and fitting of custom Narrow Planet plates by The Model Centre. Standard gauge industrial layout by me?


Alive

fairlight meta model-railways

Office time

Oh hey, another year between posts. In truth this reflects the amount of modelling work actually done; with a busy home and work (both “day” job and Narrow Planet) life there hasn’t really been much time for it, although still plenty of thinking and planning – also aka procrastination.

One development that should unblock things a little at home is the decision to move NP out into a dedicated workshop/office for the first time. We’ve been fortunate enough to find a good space not far from home at a reasonable price, and have teamed up with another local model maker – Mulberry Works – to take it on. More on this to come.

Most of the business related stuff has now vacated the garage, so with a little more breathing room maybe I’ll get back to the layout. Maybe!


More posts can be found in the archive.