A Small Amount of Progress - And Still More Stuff.....

Raymond received a home delivery early in the week commencing the 13 February. This took the form of several large cartons from Gauge One Gallery in Sydney. One carton contained a Bachmann Large Scale (read – Garden Railway) model of “James the Red Engine” of Thomas the Tank Engine fame. There were also three 6-wheel coaches for “Emily” a Stirling Single loco introduced a few years ago as a new character in the Thomas stories. It is unlikely however, that Bachmann will produce a model of “Emily”. Raymond already has two other Bachmann Large Scale models of Thomas with Annie and Clarabelle as well as Percy and two of the Troublesome Trucks.
James the Red Engine. Raymond has started collecting Bachmann's Large Scale Thomas Series because of his nephew Troy who will soon be two. Raymond and I are trying to bring Troy up in the correct way. There is the Right Way, the Wrong Way and the Rail Way - much to Troy's fathers disgust.

This is the 6-wheel Van for "Emily". The only difference from this vehicle and the two coaches is that the van has the white windows at one end. Raymond has one van and two coaches.

The other carton contained a Bachmann Garden Railway model of “Lyn” a Southern (British) Railway narrow gauge 2-4-2T from the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway.
"Lyn" is a 2-4-2T that worked on Southern Railway's narrow gauge Lynton & Barnstaple Railway.

Both Raymond and I came down with some kind of virus during the week so there was no work done on the layout.

Saturday, 18 February we went to Zillmere to the AMRA Garden Railway Group. Raymond had two Garden Railway steam locos that needed certification on the boilers. The first was Raymond’s Michigan-California Lumber Company’s 2-cylinder Shay No.2 from Accucraft in 1:20.3 Scale. The second was the Accucraft Baldwin
WD 4-6-0T built for the British Army in 16 mm Scale (running on 32 mm gauge track).
Having passed its boiler pressure test, Raymond prepares his WD Baldwin 4-6-0T for its steam test.

The Baldwin British WD 4-6-0T stands on the 32 mm gauge track ready for its first test run.

Both passed their tests okay. Raymond had some fun testing his locos while I just watched the trains.
Our friend Jason, owns this beautiful Rio Grande C-19 2-8-0 made by Accucraft. It is radio-controlled.

Raymond purchased a Roundhouse live steam John Fowler 0-6-2 ex Innisfail Tramway B9 1/2 Class from Paul Blake some time ago. Now Paul has made another one for himself this time from scratch. The Queensland Government Railways owned three of these 2 ft gauge tender locomotives. Both Raymond's and Paul's locos are radio controlled.

Sunday, 19th I went to Bunnings and bought a couple of 900 X1200 mm MDF sheets 3 mm thick. I wanted these to start mapping out the trackwork on the new section of the layout using pencil, paper and the Peco pointwork photocopies as per Darren’s instructions. This is starting to work well but silly me, I only bought two sheets of MDF when I should have purchased four. At present, I can only do the left hand end of the yard. I am on leave for the rest of this week as the builder is starting work on the bathroom rebuild so I will go back to Bunnings on Monday and pick up a couple more sheets.

It is Tuesday nighters this week, so I need to be able to say “We have made some progress”.