Ongoing Work

Sorry I have not been keeping this blog up to date. I will try to be a bit more diligent.

More info will be posted soon, but suffice it to say for now that progress is being made with completing the station frontage. Since Warley we decided to make a new fiddle yards at the station end, again using Rextroth. That delayed work on the station frontage, but has now been resumed. After much debate, we also decided to rebuild the arches section of the layout with a Rextroth base. The old sections will not be dismantled until we are sure that the new boards and trackwork run smoothly. Only then will the scenery be transferred and tidied up and the old boards pensioned off. So don’t worry if you are thinking of having us at a show; we can use the current boards until the changeover and then switch to the new ones. Should be exiting times as we use newer technology and try to get the running smoother.

And while the baseboards and scenery are being upgraded, our loco department and carriage and wagon works have also been hard at it. The mixture of railway companies running trains through Blackfriars Bridge is such that we need coaching stock for LCDR, GNR, MR and LSWR trains. As well as Chatham coaches we can now boast some non varnished teak coaches in the form of Midland and LSWR services. We can never have enough mineral wagons, so a goodly mix of GNR, MR and private owner wagons have been made to ship coal from the coalfields to the south east of England. We may also need even more break vans, as all trains using the widened lines needed two breaks when negotiating the bank from Snow Hill.

Locomotive power has also been expanded, and the works are still busy. Sadly, the Sturrock steam tender loco has been retired from service (officially at least).