A somewhat hectic start to 2024 finally seems to be settling down after family trips back up north and the usual Easter events. One highlight was seeing my granddaughter in the Market Weighton school production of Fame JR. This update is mostly about model making and model railways. As usual my wife and I did… Read More »
I don’t want the blog to cease but life has been somewhat hectic since the last post; has this blog really seen nothing new posted since Christmas: where has the year gone? Those who know me will be aware that my replacement as SLS Journal editor suffered a disastrous house fire just into the new… Read More »
Phoenix Yard (Mark 1) With the success of the recent Great Model Railway Challenge TV programme, as aired on Ch 5, together with the upcoming Warley Model Railway Show at the NEC I decided to build a very simple “shunting plank” layout to try to draw visitors to the SLS stand. Have it available so… Read More »
Plum Hollow, minor progress For a variety of reasons the Plum Hollow layout project has had almost nothing done on it for some time. That was not a case of out of sight out of mind, simply a case of other workload intervening. The scenic side is the next step, hence today’s test kit build.… Read More »
Garage As part of the ongoing tidying and fixing of the garage it became apparent that the roof was leaking. Closer inspection indicated that almost the whole of the edge strip where the roofing felt bends over the edge had split. On getting onto the roof I also discovered that the original installation in several… Read More »
Early Railways 6 – Edited by Anthony Coulls This book, Early Railways 6, for which this is the advance call for subscriptions, will be my next academically published work. The series of Early Railways Conferences held its sixth gathering in June 2016 in the cradle of railway history that is Newcastle, with visits and events across… Read More »
Missed blog posts (April & June) This is a shortened rewording of what formed the Editorial to the most recent SLS Journal and Newsletter (J912 July/August), a bi-monthly magazine which I now edit and giving the reasons for my missing the task of making blog posts here during both April and June. SLS Stand ready for… Read More »
Why no April post? Due to the increasing pressures of my SLS workload since taking on the role of Journal Editor, plus other work related to the new GDPR system there was no time to write and publish an April blog post for which I apologise. I had content to write, just not the time… Read More »
Brief blog update Another very brief blog post this month as whilst workload seems never ending time, sadly, is inelastic. Railways – Three weekends out with events. With a conference planning meeting for the Early Mainline Railways Conference (In York), The London Festival of Railway Modelling at Alexandra Palace and then back to York for… Read More »
A month of solid editing I ended last month’s blog expressing hopefully “What would have been the January content will therefore appear during February when I get back home and resume normality.” Well that hoped for return to normality during February went well, or not! What it ended up as was a month of solid… Read More »