New Year Steam

 

What better way to start the new year, than with some little chuffy trains? 

Especially if you've the remains of a cold and so could do with the fresh air. And it's not raining, or too cold. 

My plan was to take my Peckett and Roundhouse locos along for a spin on the club track. A flask of tea, along with some of those festive biscuits that need finishing up at this time of year. 

When I arrived, the track was mine alone. There were some guys at the model boat club, but as usual, they quickly shuffled off to the warmth of the clubrooms. The lake had a little bit of ice on it, and the one yacht in action, wasn't going anywhere. 

Things didn't start well. Trying to gas the Peckett, both adaptors leaked badly, and the model was quickly covered in frost. 

Since the day wasn't warm, I left this for a few minutes, attending to the other loco and hoping it would evaporate. Eventually, I gave up and lit the burner. A bit of heat would soon solve it!

A few minutes later, we had steam, and plenty of it. The little blue loco ran superbly for about 20 minutes, including a boiler top-up. 

Even with the burner turned right down, there was steam to spare. The safety valve was lifting all through the run, and we had more than enough power for the three coaches. 

A really pleasant run!

Moving on to the Lady Anne, I hit another problem. None of the three lighters I brought along would give me any flame! Even the one used for the Peckett suddenly wasn't playing. This has happened before, and I just replace them - which lasts a few goes, and then they are scrap again. One job in 2026 is to find some reliable replacements. I don't mind spending some money, if it makes the steaming session easier.   

Oh, and then I cut my thumb locking up again. I hope this isn't an allegory for the rest of the year! 

Saturday Film Club: The Last Railway Horses

A classic black & white film, showing the last railway horses, employed by British Railways. Aside from the cute factor, there's a lot to enjoy in this, showing life at a normal, small station. The sort of place we tend to model. 

Calendar time

 

Right, what am I planning to fill my weekends with this year? 

7/8 February - Doncaster Show

28 February - Midlands Garden Rail Show

21/22 March - London Festival of Railway Modelling

4-6 April - York show

19 April - SWAG Taunton

25 April - National Garden Rail Show

26 April - Key Model World

1-3 May - Bristol Model railway show

6 June - Llangollen garden rail show

12/13 September - TINGS

26/27 September - Stafford model rail show

10/11 October - GETS

24/25 October - Great British Model Railway Show

13-15 November - NEC Classic Car Show

21/22 November - National Festival of Railway Modelling

12/13 December - Manchester model railway show

I've highlighted the shows I expect to be at in some sort of official capacity. This isn't finalised, as we might split the attendance between the team, but for the moment, I'll keep the space clear in the calendar. 

In addition, I can think of other events I don't yet have dates for - Yorkshire Garden Railway Show, IPMS Telford, Rapido Railex, G1 AGM, G3 AGM, and Rowington Steam being the main holes. I'm sure there will be others too. 

This might look like quite a list, but the truth is, I love going to shows. Really love it. Even when my enthusiasm for my actually taking part in hobbies has evaporated, getting out and about still makes me happy. 

It can, I think, be partly summed up by the theme tune to the sitcom, Cheers (look it up kids, it's brilliant):  

Sometimes you wanna go 

Where everybody knows your name 

And they're always glad you came 

You wanna be where you can see (ah-ah) 

Our troubles are all the same (ah-ah) 

You wanna be where everybody knows your name

Basically, shows are full of wonderful weirdos who care about something. My tribe. 

If you see me at a show, please do come up for chat.  

2025 - Review of the year

Two decades of my rambling! That's an awful lot of posts, 7137 to be precise. Lots of words, quite a few misspelt, but hopefully, plenty of inspiration along the way. 

2025 saw me add another 365 to the list, according to Blogger. Did I really manage an entire year without a break? It seems unlikely, but we can't argue with computers.  

Stats, according to Google Analytics, are 380 visitors a day. Statcounter says 343 - take your pick, but both are up on last year. I wonder if AI spiders are busy reading this stuff and messing with the numbers? If so, then I worry for the state of that industry!

Advertising is still hopeless, but then Google controls this, and unsurprisingly, doesn't want to tilt things in favour of content creators. Fortunately, I'm not in the game of chasing numbers, but talking to those who do, it's a real worry. It would still be nice if you clicked on the adverts occasionally though. 

The usual project recap. Garratts, railcars etc. that are briefly mentioned each year have made no progress, nor has the Beetle. This might change. My sister bought me membership of the Classic VW Owners Club, and I'm hoping they can give me a lead on someone to do the work. 

Talking of Beetles, this year's big project was a Tamiya Sand Scorcher. 

I really enjoyed this project - a dream build I've wanted to do for many years. The finished model looks fantastic, and works well too. 

Apart from this, I built a Brandbright wagon kit. 

The project could have stalled for want of wheels, but thanks to a couple of generous offers, I was soon back on track (pun intended as always). 

One I had forgotten, a cheap plastic kit Mini, that found a home on my NG7 layout.  

 My 16mm scale goods train was completed by a Woodleigh Engineering flat wagon. 

 

 In 4mm scale, there was a Ratio SR van kit. 

But that's it. Quite how I managed to fill a year's worth of posts is a mystery to me. An even bigger mystery is why anyone is still reading, since I seem to do so little modelling!

The problem is that I'm so busy with work, that I don't have the time or enthusiasm for personal projects. I work, and then want to slump. According to ChatGPT, this is burnout, but working out how to tackle it is proving challenging. Not least because there is a part of my brain that considers beating myself up like this, something to be proud of! This is, apparently, a common symptom too. To be honest, without this blog, I'm not sure if I'd ever get anything done. The desire to generate posts forces me to do things that I enjoy, once I get started. 

Anyway, off the workbench, I need to mention a bit of travelling. 

First up, a city break to Lisbon.

Here, I rode the wonderful tramcars, and also all but the most modern funiculars. A fascinating place, that I want to revisit one day with my camera. Those four-wheel cars creeping around narrow streets and up and down hills, are simply amazing, and so photogenic. (Photos here)

Then it was time for the Isle of Man,

Yes, it was the enthusiasts' week, but that just means lots of weird trains to ride, and a chance to go behind the scenes. Mind you, whisper it, but the highlight was the Southern Agricultural Show! (Photos here) 

Finally, a solo trip to Germany to tick off a couple of major transport features. First, the Harz mountain railways. 

Lovely, but I enjoyed watching the trains more than riding on them. Mind you, the model village was an added bonus. (Photos here) 

The real highlight was a day on the Wuppertal monorail. Proper bucket list material!

From the moment I spotted one of the stations from the train I arrived on, I was excited. This is one of those trips I never thought I'd actually do. And I did it! (Photos here)

So, what does 2026 hold? I'd like to think that my mojo will return and I'll make a dent in the project pile, but I doubt I'll even scrape the surface of that lot. It's odd, but I've never bought a kit, or acquired a project, and not believed I'll one day get around to it. But then, when I'm wondering what to do next, very rarely does anything leap out at me with the same intensity I felt when adding it to the pile in the first place. 

Hopefully, I will keep blogging, and you will keep reading. Thanks to everyone who has followed my lack of progress this year. Wish me luck for the next one! 

2025 - The work projects

Plenty of projects for work again this year. Let's have a quick run-through. 

In the early part of the year, I was finishing off my NG7 layout. This gave me the scope to work on a lot of scenery on the page, and a few larger-scale (in BRM world) little projects, such as a K6 telephone box. 

The following month (with 13 issues a year, the dates get confusing) I'm back to N gauge for a rather nice windmill kit. 

And it's back to 7mm scale for a track cleaning wagon conversion. 

Over on the DVD, I was looking at track cleaning more generally. 

Moving back to the NG7 layout, one of my favourite projects was the station building, kitbashed from the excellent Dapol kit. 

To go with this, I made ferns from a laser-cut card kit. 

We also get some rolling stock from a Peco kit. 

We'll need some people, and I painted them up on the May DVD. 

A nice little standalone project was a duck pond in the June issue. 

There's also a quick build of a platelayers hut kit. 

June marked the start of a quieter period of workbench activity, so my only project was to make a Peco lamp work. 

 July saw a rare TT:120 project - renumbering a locomotive. 

Something a little different, a personal departure board, which I reviewed, and then we gave away as a competition prize.

Moving to August, and I'm making proper finescale track. OK, just a short length, but hopefully, a few people were tempted to more. 

I like cranes, and was pleased to be able to build a simple Coles rail-mounted example in September. 

For BRM TV, I took a look at a Dyna-Drive fitted model. Something that most people would never have heard of!

If you have a suitable scrap wagon, such as the World of Railways exclusive pack from Accurascale, I added a simple load in October. 

November, and I built the classic Peco kit for a horse-drawn dray. I think this one looked fantastic on the page. For an old kit, it's still a good-un. 

 December arrives, and I dabble with some N gauge rolling stock.

 There's also a World of Railways exclusive building. 

 

Bought and built in under four days, for the January issue, we have this nice little shed. 

We finish the year with the February issue, where I'm back to N gauge, and the perfect addition to the top of your bridges. 

I even manage a modest 4mm scene with some Skytrex skips. 

With its increased pagination, Garden Rail also needs me to build a few things. The biggest of which has been a battery-powered steam railmotor from a Timpdon kit. 

There have been several more, but I don't have time to dig back through and work out what I've built. Well, other than the "Layout in a Day" feature at the National Garden Railway Show. 

For the Hornby Collectors Club magazine, I've been working my way through some classic Hornby kits from the 1980s.

It's been very interesting both sourcing these kits, and then building them. Several are still available in slightly different forms too. Me? I just like to show that kits aren't just for collecting, they are for building!

I've also carried out a few TT:120 projects for their house magazine. 

It's an exciting scale, with new products appearing all the time. As I write, I've just submitted my latest, using some new models that appeared this year. Who knows what we will have in 12 months time? 

All this though, has been dominated by the saddest event in my work life. The loss of my friend and colleague, Andy York.  

From a practical point of view, I've had to take over processing all the layout photos for BRM, often a week's work for a single magazine. I'd already been out and about with my camera a lot, but now those duties are mostly mine too. This is why my appearance on the page with practical projects has been limited, although we're trying to build it up again. 

Moderation on RMweb, something I helped out with in a small way, is now mostly my problem. Much of the time it's not too onerous, but every so often things spiral, and no matter what I'm doing, I need to step in. Andy used to spend vast amounts of time herding the railway modelling cats, and there's no way I can match that effort, which sometimes shows. The forum is something people are very passionate about, and I'm keen to maintain Andy's legacy. 

Personally, I've lost my safety valve. Who do I ring up when I need to rant about work, or the hobby? It has to be someone in the firm. That someone used to be Andy. I've not managed to fill that hole yet. I probably never will. 

A long post, and I still haven't mentioned shows attended and many other jobs, but if you are still with me, thanks for buying the mags and keeping me in a job. Don't forget, I'm only on the end of an email if there is anything I can do to help you enjoy your hobby more. And no, I don't mean make toy trains cheaper...