West Midlands Narrow Gauge Group – October 2021 meeting.

Twelve made it to Moorfield Hall for our October meeting.

Peter Hardy brought along his latest layout, a ‘lock down’ project called ‘Norton Heath’. This is based on the track plan drawn up by Angela Baker for ‘West Midford’ – the replacement for Bowleggett Manor that we never got around to building.

The tracks on Norton Heath saw quite a variety of stock durning the evening. Steve Mann ran a Bachmann Baldwin in WHR maroon livery, with a  second from Andy Foster in Snailbeach livery. This was hauling a nice pair of freelance bogie hopper wagons. There was also, a crowd of Kerr Stuarts and a plethora of Pecketts from Ben Powell, were joined by a Peckett Gamecock chassis built by Geoff Harper from the SRB kit. Even Peter’s own K1 Garratt got a look in, and there may well have been other things that ran that escaped my attention.

Elsewhere in the hall Tim Williams had his snow scene out on display.  This seems to have advanced since we last saw it, with snow covered bushes and debris from the snow ploughing added to the land around the railway line. Tim also had a new layout/test track called ‘The Circle Line’.  This saw a rake of Tim’s 3d printed slate wagons of various types. Motive power when i looked was by some of Will King’s locos. These were vertical and horizontal boiler deWintons, Bagnall inverted saddle tank and McEwan Pratt / Baguley 10 hp petrol loco. Also away from Norton Heath David Churchill had brought along two NDM6 diesel bodies for 009, one printed in India the other obtained through Narrow Gauge Railway Modelling Online.

There was also a selection of books and magazines to peruse.