Today we had the unusual, the bizarre and the unexpected at Badlesmere.
First up was Roger’s Class 73 Diesel No 73101 which had been painted in Pullman colours to mark the 150th anniversary of the London to Brighton line in 1991 and named “Brighton Evening Argus” to celebrate 100 years of that paper. It was then renamed “The Royal Alex” in 1992 as part of a fund raising exercise for a children’s hospital in Brighton in 1992 but retained its Pullman livery all its working life latterly working on ballast trains and the like.
I ran my SECR Class F1 and E Class now both fitted with DCC decoders and enough sound to get everybody’s attention at the other end of the room. Geoff produced a bizarre looking double ended Sentinel Class Y10, a sort of push me pull you, and an ex-LNER motor rail Class Y11 0-4-0 shunter which was apparently known as the mobile greenhouse, and you can see why when you look at it. Geoff also had a BR Hudswell Clark 0-6-0DM pulling a short freight train and later his two new Dapol J94s, one in NCB colours and one in BR livery, chased each other around the circuit.
Steve gave his BR 8F 2-8-0 90241, which he has been working on for a while now, a good run out pulling a freight train. Graham brought along his heavily weathered 9F 92030 2-10-0 and had it hauling a long freight train which included a 60ft Dolphin track maintenance wagon. Graham also brought along his LNER V4 61700 2-6-2 which he had pushing a NE
snow plough around the circuit and his LNER O2 63942 2-8-0 which also did snow plough duty. All three of these heavily weathered locomotives demonstrated very clearly the decline in locomotive presentation standards between the early 1900s and the 1960s when compared to my two SECR locomotives resplendent in full Wainwright livery.
Over lunch Geoff told us that he would be taking a diorama and our banner to the forthcoming show at Aylesham, Roger asked if anybody had any GWR wagon transfers as he wishes to back date some of his rolling stock to pre-nationalisation
Earlier Ian Earl had popped over to discuss the roof leak in the store which has damaged some of the scenic work on Queen Charlotte Dock. He is to get somebody to get up on the roof, probably with a mastic gun, to check for any obvious water ingress points but we may have to consider doing something ourselves inside the store to prevent this happening again.
David Ho assisted by Tim kept us all supplied with teas and coffees until we packed everything away and headed off home. Chris
