Warwickslade Cutting railway

Whilst searching for something else I found some images of Warwickslade Cutting Railway. Warwickslade Cutting was a straight drainage ditch dug circa 1850 in the New forest. In 2009, The Forestry Commission decided to fill it in and replace it with a meandering stream, presumably to benefit wildlife. A light railway was used to assist in this work to allow working in all conditions, prevent too much erosion, and reduce emissions.



The 'loco' is a Boxer Mini-Skid, and the track panels appear to use cylindrical rails. It's difficult to tell if it's standard or narrow gauge, but it looks fairly broad. Obviously modelling it accurately would require some challenging scratchbuilding, but kits could but used to build a narrow gauge interpretation.  In in O scale KBscale track and rolling stock could be used, or Nigel Lawton's range could be used in 009 with modified N gauge setrack used to represent the track panels.  Operationally it would be fairly dull, though in O scale a working digger might be a possibility.

More pictures can be found on Geograph and Wikimedia Commons

A new layout

I said in my previous post that I'd not built a layout, but I found this draft post from almost a year ago with a completed layout. It might not be the usual toy trains but it was fun to build and I was pleased enough with the design to take a photo.  It can either be an inverted figure of eight or two ovals linked by a scissor crossover.  The advantage of wooden trains is that I don't need to work out where to put isolating rail joiners!

It was a relaxing way to spend a cold Sunday afternoon with my children, which is a better way of spending it than getting frustrated with a kit I'm trying to build.

Deconstruction

I knew it had been a while since I posted anything, but I didn't realise it had been over a year!  Any readers left will not be surprised to learn that I've not a layout in that time, but have built a couple of buildings, and a been to a couple of railways, so I've got material for a few blog posts.

The reason for this post is that Michael Campbell's recent posts about building a Kerr Stuart Skylark inspired me to have a look at the partially constructed kit I bought a couple of years ago.  I was obvious that it would require some modification to fit on the Dapol 14xx chassis I had in mind for it, but I'd need to get it into the component parts before I could work whether it would fit.  I'd been meaning to buy some superglue remover, but a quick google search suggested that hot water might do the job.  I found a jug and ran the hot tap and a couple of minutes later I had all the parts.  Checking it against the 14xx chassis shows I'll need modify the footplate, and probably the boiler too.  I'm undecided as to whether to modify the doors like Michael, there's no question that his loco looks nicer with the modifications, but I'm wondering if I should keep it as simple as possible to increase the likelihood of me actually finishing the thing.