esngblog

A busy railway weekend.  Friday night, Allan, Derek and I paid a visit to the West Sussex N Gauge club, partly to discuss Stuttgart plans.  We enjoyed a pleasant drive through the countryside to get there, and saw a number of old friends.

Sunday saw 10 ESNG members gathering, and plenty of trains moving, especially on the DCC track once Sean had done something magic with it.

The treasurer was doing a little woodwork on a new trolley – it’s to move corners into the cupboard, rather than to move the aging ESNG members around the hall.

There seems to have been a local Pendolino delivery.  One Virgin, two Virgins, three Virgins.  Reminds me of an old joke that I won’t repeat on this blog!

Varied DCC running….

On the main line….

Derek’s prototype Deltic with 14 coaches behind….

And my tanker train headed by a Jinty….

Finally, Brian produced an excellent video.  This one includes a sound track from the DCC track!

Of course the evening ended with a curry – and a chance to admire the Ruchita’s new mural on the end wall of the building.

Well, it was the evening everyone was waiting for – the ESNG AGM.  Nine members braved this event, whilst another ten wisely gave apologies for absence!

It was a pleasant and amiable meeting.  The existing committee was returned very quickly, there being no other (voluntary) nominations.  Meetings will stay one the same days each month.   Ideas for next year’s exhibitions were discussed.  It was agreed to dispose of some of the old bits of modules currently lurking in Mr Atfield’s garage.

Perhaps the only weighty item was the lack of new members, and any way we could change that.  And I’m afraid that there were no great ideas.  It’s just a problem that most organisations have these days.  And we also wondered whether we could exhibit externally a bit more.

So, with that out the way, you might like to go trainspotting on the Southern in 1992….

Or enjoy this excellent model of the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway…

https://www.facebook.com/modelsoftheRHDR

Or a Class 37 with endless new wagons behind…

A very hot day and a very busy afternoon – 10 members plus one visitor.  A good number of trains were run, and there was a lot of talking, too.  Dave brought along his canal basin, so we set up a 2×1 module layout (that gave Dave room to get inside the circuit to operate his module.

We tried the DCC track again.  Simon’s diesels ran fine, but we didn’t have much luck with anything else.  Possibly operator problems – Sean, come back, all is forgive – we need a technocrat!

Chris ran a Canadian goods, that ran faultlessly for most of the afternoon.

Dave’s canal basin stocked with an interesting selection of locomotives.

British pick-up goods and Channel Tunnel maintenance from Derek…

A Class 28 and Conflats and a new Dapol M7 from Nigel….

I had a Western parcels afternoon.  It was also one of those afternoons when it was difficult to keep everything on the track and coupled….

And good to see Brian for a brief visit – and for a resulting brief video, including sound from Nigel’s Class 28….

Another work party before the evening meeting on Wednesday.  Five of us met to work, and another two joined us to run trains in the evening.  We did have things to do on the fiddle yard and corners, but opted for a spring clean and modifications to the store cupboard shelving.

We managed to compress some of the ‘stuff’ stored in the cupboard into a few storage boxes, and a number of old tins and boxes went for recycling.  Having raised the shelf in the cupboard, the layout fit fairly neatly underneath, and the support equipment fits on the shelf above with room to spare.

The usual circuit, but this is easy to put together, and works well….

With the DCC system wired up, Simon successfully ran a diesel set.  However, we were unable to get his steam loco to perform.  It may have been due to two people trying to operate one loco.  Typical ESNG – DCC allows two locos to run on one track.  ESNG tries to have two people run one loco.  Obviously we still have more to learn!

Simon had bought a Wisconsin Central loco for Allan, to go with his EWS locos.  Same owner, same livery.  It didn’t want to move though….

Elsewhere, there was plenty of UK stock on view….

Back on Sunday, then the next Wednesday meeting is the ESNG AGM.  No doubt there will be the usual keen competition for places on the committee….