Year: 2008

Categories
Miscellanea

Starting point

Over the years I’ve been meaning to start a layout, and I’ve acquired a few useful bits:

  • 2 A2 sized pieces of 5mm foam board.
  • Some Knightwing kits for portacabins, fuel depots and so on.
  • A Bachmann 25 in BR blue – the first DCC ready loco I was aware of.
  • A selection of medium radius Peco code 100 streamline points, with solenoid switches.
  • Some matching flexitrack.
  • Figures, suitable for a BR corporate image era layout.
  • Souvenir wagons from my travels (so from Japan, France, Germany and so on).
  • The wagons, locos and track from the late 80’s when I was using model railways more as a toy.

And finally, the spark to my recent restart – the Hornby Pendolino DCC train set.

What I wanted to do is build a layout that re-uses as much of this as I can, so that it doesn’t end up costing a huge amount.

Categories
Locomotives

The Pendolino

Hornby Pendolino

I remember writing that life had got busy. At the time my largest customer was based in Birmingham, and I was spending a fair amount of time (as were many of my team) commuting up the West Coast Mainline. I became accustomed to the 8.10 from Euston, and I was usually impressed with the service. I’m sure I mentioned (more than once!) to everyone who travelled with me that I had grown up in a house that I could see the WCML trains from. When I decided to leave Symbian and take some sabbatical time this year, I was surprised to be presented with the Hornby model of the Pendolino I’d spent so much time on.

I enjoyed model trains as a kid, and as an adult I went along to the odd show, and procrastinated about building a layout ‘someday’. Laying the new trainset out on the floor rekindled my interest, and I’ve now spent the first few weeks of my sabbatical building that ‘someday layout’. I doubt that was the effect my colleagues expected, but thank you all, it’s been a blast!

Incidentally my picture doesn’t do credit to the model Hornby have created, which is a nice replica of the real thing – complete with great details like tilting around curves.

Categories
Miscellanea

Welcome to my workbench

Welcome to my workbench! This blog is for me to publish about my model railway (that’s railroad for those of you who speak US English) hobby. Hopefully showing off my efforts will enable me to keep in touch with like minded souls, and spur my own skills to improve.