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It's been a 'tweaking' day today, sorting out all those little problems that have been left 'for another day'. There was a point blade in the terminus siding that just wouldn't sit flush when set in one direction causing the wagons to lift slightly when passing over. In fact today it caused a derailment which ultimately led to even more 'tweaking'. There was nothing amiss with the point that I could see, no stray ballast or glue residue, so in the end I just gently filed it down and it's now sitting as it should. The derailment over the above point concerned two Bachmann OTA wagons, the ones I added additional weight to although the weight had nothing to do with the cause of the derailment. The OTA's, like several other wagon types, have swivelling axles to enable them to go round train set curves but the Bachmann ones, unlike the similar Hornby model, do not have a centering mechanism and I found that when propelling the train the axles can be quite significantly skewed resulting in the wheels not being in line with the rails. To compound things further, when the axles are off centre the Kadee couplings won't couple. I've seen many occasions where modellers have glued one of the axles solid so that it can't swivel but I decided that I could do something similar with both axles. I just lightly glued a packing piece in position so that the axle has barely any sideways travel. No problem with them going over double pointwork and now the couplings remain centred. I've done the same with all my Bachmann OBA's and will look at the VGA's later. Another tweak - one of my class 158s was stuttering and sometimes coming to a stand. No problem with the track and the wheels were cleaned without any improvement so I took it apart and discovered a wire to one of the bogie pickups had become detached. I dismantled the bogie and re-soldered the wire and we're back in action again. Such a relief as normally I end up making things worse. Then I fitted a Hornby TTS sound decoder to one of my class 20s using a 21 pin to 8 pin adaptor. A tight squeeze but I just about managed to get the body back on. Unfortunately the class 20 runs better in one direction than it does the other but maybe a few laps round the garden will improve it. Almost forgot. I fitted a Kadee coupling to the Dapol class 68 in place of the tension lock so that it could propel the track cleaner round the layout and give 26024 a break. When it had finished I decided to fit a Kadee at the other end but found that there was no NEM pocket! Looks like it's been missed off at the factory so I've had to request a spare. This evening I've begun weathering ballast wagons, namely Bachmann Sealion's, Seacow's and Limpet's. I have four olive green Sealion's and two Dutch liveried Seacow's as well as four Limpet wagons. The olive greens will be in rusty condition and the Dutch in lightly weathered. The Limpets really should be battered but I'll see how I get on with them. Here's the 'out of the box' Sealion ...and after I'd attacked it with the first coat of enamel paint stippled with a sponge. The inner requires more rust around the top part and I'll go over the body sides again once this has dried. I'll do the bogies with the airbrush. Here's a Seacow before ..... ....and after. I've only done the sides and interior so far. The ends, chutes and bogies await treatment. And this next little fella has been my 'cab ride' camera holder for as long as I can remember. I'm going to have to find another suitable wagon to hold the camera now. Still work to do on this one and another three to start. I'll do the chassis with the airbrush. I think that's all for now.

Hi Mick, good to hear that bad weather has settled down, we are heading for silly weather, next Monday going to be 31 degrees, crazy, hope that doesn't mead we will have a hot summer., hopefully the layout be up and running by then. I cut out and made the piers for the bridge today, made the them big enough for four pavers each side of the arch for weight so the bridge be able to stand up on its own without having to screw to the floor., main part of the bridge is nearly finished, next will paint the rail deck so I can nail down the track, wont be having bus wires , just solder in feeder wires to at each flexi track join . In the first pic is what my piers be like when finished with the arch , can see just before the bridge a maintenance gantry bridge, plan to have one on my bridge too, be cutting out a hole so the gantry can access the other side of the bridge, be like the last two pics, actually what my double deck bridge is based on the double deck cable stay bridge between the Sweden and Denmark , was my first bridge . Tony from nice donw under keeping on moving ahead.

I was able to have a decent running session yesterday using the stock that was already on the layout as well as two class 158 DMU's. I discovered that there's too many wagons on track to make forming trains easy and so I'll need to decide which ones are required or a better way of operating. I probably need to start thinking of complete running sessions extending over several days rather than trying to run everything in a single session. A lot of time yesterday was spent altering CV's, especially on the class 158's, in order to get smooth acceleration from a standing start. I managed to hook up the laptop and use DecoderPro to view and edit the respective values which becomes much easier when you can see what the current value is. Here's a few photo's from yesterday with apologies for there being just the usual loco's on view so they'll probably look very much like all my other photo's. I did manage a few short videos but just haven't had time to do anything with those yet. 37025 'Inverness TMD' with a decent freight train crossing Low Shott viaduct. 37025 then makes it's way round Low Shott Flatts, a view not often seen as it means scrambling amongst the shrubbery to reach this vantage point. And once again we see 37025 this time hauling its' train along Stackgarth Gill towards Stack Gill viaduct, a much more accessible viewpoint. Not to miss out on the action, and a relief to not be hauling the track cleaner around, 26024 is seen hauling a rake of VGA's in the opposite direction along Stackgarth Gill. And finally, 26024 again crossing Low Shott viaduct with the VGA's. I think I need to get out more!