Findhorn Light Railway - The 2009 Chapter's
By Martin Wickham
Well Winter is here and so is another year. The first snow of the year has fallen upon the Findhorn Light Railway, and just like the real thing (with a little bit of help) has caused complete chaos.
During the snowfall, my six year old son and our dog, decided to have a huge snowball fight and in the process trash most of the layout.
The track is now in many pieces, and unfortunately, so is the stairs to the signal box and some pieces have also been broken off the small halt building.
The moral of this story is that next year, I will be packing away all the buildings for safe keeping.
Toby is still not finished as we have had some technical set backs with the gearbox, and he has had to have some repairs carried out with the help of Glendale Junction.
Mark has been flat out catching up with all his Garden Rail articles so has been unable to finish the bodywork on the tram, but he promises to look at it again soon. I really appreciate all the help that Mark has given me, as without his help and input, I am sure that I would not have been able to tackle this comprehensive little project.
Winter Project
January 2009 has seen the purchase of a new building for The Findhorn Light Railway - a wooden windmill.
I was lucky enough to pick up this lovely little wooden windmill half price from a friend who worked for a garden centre suppliers. Although this is not up to the quality and standard of Marks latest creation (see new article coming soon) it will make a really nice feature on my layout.
I hope to give it a lick of paint once I have some more buildings in place too.
The next thing to do on the layout will be re-lay all the track and make some changes to incorporate the last lot of extra track that Mark has kindly sold me.
Wickham Trolley & Rolling Stock
I have made a start on the building of the family Wickham Trolley, but have not got on very well.
I have managed to mess up some of the cutting and have decided to enlist help again before I mess anymore up.
On Marks advice I have enlisted the expertice of Richard at the club, who is going to cut out all the pieces along with all the parts for two wagons that were won at the garden railway show last year, so watch this space for the progress of these items soon.
March 2009
Well I have to say that not much has been done on the Findhorn Light Railway these last few months. I have done a small amount of work on building the Wickham Trolley but there is still a long way to go.
Mark has been unable to finish the body on Toby due to his very busy work schedule at the moment.
The only thing that I have really managed to do, is seriously plan a new track layout for the garden. Just before Christmas I managed to obtain a number of straight LGB track sections so plan a much larger and more interesting layout this time. It works on paper, but will have to see what happens for real.
I also managed to pick up a cheap Playmobil level crossing on ebay and plan to incorporate that into the layout too.
Hopefully the weather will improve soon and things will start to happen outside, I really cant wait as they track is looking a little lonely out there!
April 2009
My fingers are crossed that I will be able to run a train on my birthday, will have to wait and see?
May 2009
We had a fantatic day watching the train ride round and round the layout, keeping all the small and large children amused!
I had to adjust some of the points which made the loco de-rail but otherwise a great running day.
One other thing that I found out is that the incline of the line close to the house is too much for this little loco as it really struggled to climb that section of track, will look at adjusting that at a later date.