Tanking along and mixing it up a bit.

Well the beginning of the new stock fleets began today with the lucky purchase of 8 lima TEA tanks in Total grey livery. For £7.50 each i thought they were to good to resist. They will form a rake with some Bachmann TTA wagons and should look good with a petroleum livered 60 at the helm. Theres still plenty to go though for example im on the look out for cheap PGA wagons to build up to 30, i currently have 11 so theres plenty of work to do there. I also need around another 20 odd HEA wagons to build up the rake a bit but i do have a rake of freightliner flats but with 20 roads to fill theres plenty left! Im also looking at forming up two speedlink rakes and these will be mixed an varied workings with both opens, vans, scrap wagons, PCA cement tanks, cargowagons with other oddities. Together with one rake of seacows and one spoil rakes that means i have 12 roads left. Reduce that to 10 by having two sets of light locos, then take out another two for DMUs. This leaves 8 but that goes down to 6 when you take into account the two HST sets which can then be reduced to 4 once you add in two I/C LHCS rakes and then add one each of a Regional/provincial rake and an nse rake leaves me with two to find rakes for. I could add one charter rake with a steam loco but it leaves me with one road spare. What goes in that road, im not sure but im sure i will be able to find something to fill it but i will need a few spare wagons and coaches along with an odd rake extra incase i have issues. Anyway plenty of time to do it all but time is ticking.....

Has 25KV come to Llwydd Town

Well work has begun on Llwydd Town but there been on thing that im not sure whether to go through with or not. Theres a small temptation to add 25KV OHLE on the rear passenger line. It would change the layout but im not overly certain whether to do it at the moment but its a possibility but i suspect it will be a later mod. In terms of the rest of the layout ive got the point motors to fit and im also going to do a route setting system for the four fiddle yard roads. im also going to put in a power bus system using figure of eight cable and choc blocs. One bonus is that the wiring is already red and black so it should make identification quite easy. I do have to cut two rails as there are electrofrog points but im quite happy i thought i might have to cut alot more! There are also some signals to install. Im going to use the Berko range of signals simply for cost as i already have two that i need. Im also going to put in some shunt signals. Because of all of this im going to have to do a small mimic panel but thats ok as ive decided that the set of legs supporting the middle board are going to be wider so i can add a shelf the length of the board. The end boards will hang off the centre boards and will have 9 inch wide legs as oposed to 16 inch legs for the centre board. Ive also got to box up the board for protection and also for ease of transport and also to keep the dust off during storage! The only other jobs are small ones such as refitting the bridge and replacing the fence round the fuel unloading point which was damaged while in storage!