Yet another busy day at Badlesmere. After setting up the big table Sarre, Lenham and the micro layout were all brought out to be worked on. Roger, Jackie and John B set about installing magnets on Sarre to enable Dingham automatic couplings to be used thus avoiding, in theory at least, having to lean over the layout and fiddle about with uncoupling hooks when coupling and decoupling.
Efficient operation of this system may be something of an acquired art so practice may be needed before everybody is comfortable with it.
Sleeper laying on Lenham continued a pace with David G, Paul W, Bill, John J, Ross and me all sleepering away. Just to make it even more interesting David G then introduced the concept of using some thinner sleepers leftover from Edington and doubling them up to achieve the same height as the new sleepers. Getting carried away I think David then started talking about the joys of sliding chairs on to rails but the rest of us ignored him as sleeper laying was more than enough fun for one day.
Meanwhile Tim, John P and David Ho continued their discussions on the track plan for the micro layout. Apparently, the layout is too micro for the track plan originally envisaged so a further simpler iteration is being worked up.
Back on the big table today’s focus on road vehicles was ably represented by many fine and interesting models. Dave B also brought in a railway coach that he had been working on with excellent results. John D had brought in three pretty ancient unpainted and unknown locos. After deciding which tender went with which loco and that they were probably Highland Railway locos they were given a quick turn on Sarre. Surprisingly all three worked but didn’t like the Peco points.
During lunch Geoff was thanked for organising the trip to Mangapps Railway on 8th June which had been greatly enjoyed by all who went. We then went on to discuss forthcoming programme and this year’s Open Day on Saturday 23rd July. Our next meeting is the Saturday Skills Session on 25th June with Tim and John P discussing buildings.
Our meeting after that on Wednesday 6th July will now focus on Edington and four and six wheeled coaches. This enables us to give Edington a good run out ahead of the Open Day and also allows anybody who would like to the opportunity to learn or refresh their memory as to how this layout is operated. It is important that we maintain a sufficient pool of members who are comfortable operating our layouts when we show them to the public, so please get involved and learn to operate them if you haven’t already done so.
On Wednesday 20th July we will now focus on the circuit and brake vans and then in preparation for Open Day we will meet at 2.00pm on Friday 22nd July to set everything up and give it all a quick test run. We will then come back to the hall at 10.00am on the Saturday to open the doors to the public at 11.00am before finally winding up the day at 4.00pm and putting everything away.
Finally, we went through the dates of various shows that Roger had provided and discussed our attendance or otherwise at each of them.
