The New Year has seen us continue with more workshops, running an even greater variety of trains -and become increasingly concerned about the coronavirus.
So, first, the good news. Mike H and Clive produced an excellent article on Navigation Road for the March 2020 Railway Modeller. Clive’s collection of photographs and Mike’s words created a very accurate account of our club layout. It is also possible to find videos of it, taken at exhibitions by modellers, which are posted on You Tube.
Our first workshop of the year was a wagon building session which saw a good variety of vehicles under construction. Strangely, the majority were of Parkside plastic kits with nobody bringing all the hardware needed to produce a soldered wagon. Thank goodness Peco have taken over the extensive Parkside range.
During the evening, there was some discussion on the springing of wagons. Almost all of those being built had an unsprung or uncompensated chassis, the one exception being a Parkside GWR meat van being built to go on a previously constructed Brian Morgan sprung brass chassis.
The second workshop, led by Mike E, dealt with the perennial problem of building a loco chassis using Gibson, as opposed to Markits, wheels. Mike’s experience and expertise as one of our P4 modellers was very evident, and he answered a myriad of questions with great skill.
As I write, we have just suspended our fortnightly meetings until the problems with the coronavirus are over. With about one third of our members in the group the Government is saying should stay at home, we think it is wise not to take any unnecessary risks.
We hope fellow modellers manage to get through this very difficult period.
This report – written by Joe Newman – appears in Issue 224 of the EM Gauge Society newsletter.