Seven of us made it to the May online meeting, including Hugh Norwood joining us from ‘up North’.
Mac Strong had been fitting some MTB point motors to his layout. These MP1 type consist of a non-stalling servo device running on 12 volt and comes with frog polarity switching and adjustable throw.
Tim Williams had been continuing is 1:1 scale activities involving the laying of 2′ and 7 1/4″ gauges at Bala for the Bala ReRailed event to publicise the extension project. He was also able to show us some photos and video taken over the weekend (12/13th June0, available at https://youtu.be/ELHiX-ng5aE and https://bala-lake-railway.co.uk/2021/06/15/bala-rerailed/
Hugh Norwood showed us a few of his recent projects, including a 3D printed Avonside 0-4-0T from Dave Malton’s railway bits on Shapeways, a 3D printed Shay, a Victorian horse bus from Langley and some additional figures for his ‘Angst-Lesspork’ layout.
Julien Webb had been busy, but had managed to do a little more to his Dave Malton Avonside 0-4-0T and was working on replacing the plastic railings on a bridge he had built for fellow West Mids member John Walker in brass.
Charlie Forbes had progressed well with his Campbelltown & Macrihanish based 2-6-2T, and a model of an Australian Baldwin bogie diesel in plasticard on a Lifelike bo-bo chassis was looking largely complete apart from detailing.
Ben Powell had recovered from firing Alpha at Statfold the previous day and gave us an update on progress on his brewery layout – a new loop on the layout and work on the fiddle yard boards – but work was being hampered by the oft space workshop getting a bit warm.
With a weekend of full size steam there was also some discussion of how parts from similar locos were swapped, about particularly quarry Hunslets, and what constituted a loco’s ‘identity’. Certainly with some preserved locos having parts for 3 or 4 other locos we wondered if there was a case for calling them ‘Franken-Hunslets’!
