Well...its been a wee while since I posted...been a tad busy.  what with uni, a very good friendship plus general life i havent had much time for model making.  Been to carlisle quite a bit by train, so thats something!  And the 350s arent bad to ride (though they could seriously do with coupling 2 together more regularly than they do...also...First Transpennine...I'm not sure how you actually manage to have a "technical fault" on a sodding refreshments trolley...did a wheel come off???)

DB schenker 60 and DRS 66 at Carlisle 22/05/15 on some sort of a ballast train.
Later saw this parked at kingmoor yard

..ramble ramble busy busy etc etc.  Havent even been along to the club very much its been that crazy!  But now I've got the summer before me i have a wee bit more time to "do" trains.

Went to a swapmeet recently and picked up a Kato NW2 switcher, in Maryland and Pennsylvania.  Very nice but i needed it in CN, so I've been repainting it...which is going a little better than i thought.  spray painting stock has always been my least favorite bit of modelling because
a) finish is always crap
b) i get covered in paint
c) the garage gets covered in paint
d) my model ends up worse than before!

But im actually pleased with the results so far.  I got the transfers off with a glass fibre pen, had to wear rubber gloves to do this as ive had experiences with glass fibres in my fingers before...urggghh. Then sprayed the body black and the ends orange.  Now really just need to scratchbuild new exhausts and get some CN logos + running no.

At the same swapmeet i got 3 nice books, one is a classification of american diesel locos (from the late 70s, so covers quite a lot of stuff even though obviously later mahooosive GE stuff isnt included).  Also one on the Baltimore & Ohio and another on the New York Central.  Been really nice with the weather recently to sit outside reading these, with a beer too...(I can feel like a real 'Murican! :-)  )

My new books!

repainting the ac4400 has been...um...well take a look...

hmmmm...

"oh dear" you say.  yes, I sprayed it with gloss paint without realizing it was gloss...now trying to redo it with railmatch red...yeah told you spray painting wasnt my strength :-/

The North American rail bug has bitten my brother a little more too...hes got himself an F7cab and booster units in pennsylvania rr colors. He's wanting to redo it in CP just for a wee spraying exercise.

Now finally heres a couple pics of the old layout we built in the attic , started this when i was 13!

layout

yeah its a mess!

we had some BS idea about it being freelance so we could run what we liked etc  decent standard for kids but wanting something better now...need to find a way to get the ballast and scenery off so we can reuse the old boards possibly...if the 2 (or 3! :-P ) people who read this have any ideas please let me know :-)

So anyways will need to measure the part of the attic we're using, so id better go do that now, have a good day!

wee edit: btw most probably know that here in scotland driver training has begun on the new borders line from Edinburgh to Tweedbank - if I get any photos of this in the near future I'll be sure to post them!