Fairlight Works

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

Irons and fires

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Perhaps surprisingly, there has been a reasonable amount of progress since my last modelling update, although typically not all the same direction!

Following a small flurry of retail therapy at Narrow Gauge South West I have built a couple of Tralee & Dingle vans from Parkside kits, regauged to 9mm, with fine brass wire replacing moulded door handles and a couple of other detailing tweaks. The T&D was not the most generous of the Irish 3′ lines in loading gauge, and these vehicles are a good fit at the larger end of OO9. They’re also usefully anonymous, and part of a plan to set myself up as a ROSCO for my friend Tom’s planned new layout, Port na Cailliche.

Along similar lines I’ve been hacking up styrene again to put a narrow gauge body on a Bachmann 2-8-2 chassis. The design for this has been inspired by the Hudswell Clarke 4-6-2T locos of the Londonderry & Lough Swilly Railway, suitably scaled and adjusted to suit both the chassis and the needs of a fictional 2’6″ gauge line through the wilds of the Scottish highlands. Photos will be forthcoming, but probably only once it is reasonably complete as I have come to dread littering the blog with false starts.

I’ve also had the opportunity to compare the new outside-framed Graham Farish class 08 chassis with the mock-up body I made for the Indian PL class O-6-4T which Tom hopes to produce as a kit. Initial impressions are that it could be a very good fit, so high up on the list of things to do is to modify or reproduce another body to prove it.

Some thought has been given to the 2009 ExpoNG competition, details of which are now online. Last time I failed to get anywhere near completing my entry, so mindful of false starts I will be giving myself an lower (i.e. easier) target to aim for this year.

It also perhaps worth noting that I’ve now had Google Analytics installed on this blog for exactly a year, and traffic has been trending upwards gradually over that time. In fact it has measured 7,747 visits by 3,845 visitors. Not bad really, considering I hardly ever write about what I originally intended to!