Today we were looking at trams, tram engines and buses. Looking is the right word as there weren’t any trams and the buses obviously weren’t going to perform very well on the circuit. However, Fred did run his K&ESR Ford railmotor No. 3 and Martin ran his Class 121 railcar. On the big table there was a flurry of buses (is that an appropriate collective noun for them?) all in an assortment of different colours and liveries and all much admired by the cognoscenti. Green and yellow seemed to be the predominant colours despite us being in the East Kent area and David G even had one in Royal Blue although he kept quite quiet about that. Elsewhere on the big table John D was repairing a wagon that he had picked up for a song, Roger had a big box of plastic figures that he was tidying up the mould marks of before painting and Steve had some wagons with different loads and a shunting horse with the appropriate halter and chains.
The Permanent Way Working Party of Steve and Tim were having fun ballasting board four of Queen Charlotte Dock which was then left out on the stage to dry off for a few days before going back in the storeroom. David Ho brought Badlesham out of the storeroom again to work on in the hall. With the platform and track work now in place this layout is beginning to take shape with several people having volunteered or been volunteered to work on different aspects of it. Fred discussed the back scene with David H and I added a magnet or two to the platform line to enable the uncoupling of Dingham fitted coaches. Over lunch there wasn’t much to report other than we decided to hold an Open Day next year at the end of May to coincide with the start of the half term holiday. Roger told us about some very useful clamps for modelling produced by Flory Models and Tim told us about the Guild’s forthcoming Soldering Workshop at Dunkirk on 14 November. Angela bravely took over the catering duties on one of the busiest days of the year while David Ho was otherwise engaged. Tim also helped out and between them kept us all replete with teas and coffees. Chris
