Time for a bit of highlighting!

Time for a bit of highlighting of the running wheels of the A39 Tortoise and that involves my usual dilute wash of black paint.

With eight sets of wheels to do this will keep me amused for an hour or so!

Hindsight!

Well, things do move on as the running wheel sets to the MENG A39 Tortoise now have all their rubber tyres painted in a grey which I prefer to the 'bright' black that people think rubber looks like. It may do, fresh out of the factory, but stuck on a wheel as a tyre and put out on the road or ground it soon weathers!

I have touched in parts of the green as well With hindsight (what a wonderful thing that is!) I would have painted the wheel centres before assembling them. As they stand, there are still unpainted parts but once the tracks and side skirts are on it will be mostly be covered - I hope!

No change in three and a half years!

 I do look back through this blog and it is interesting to see what I was up to over the years and the progress and changes made with the things I cover in my posts. Usually it is glacial progress but changes do happen. 

However, sometimes there is no change. Out with Mrs. woody we came across this which I term as a Railway Garden.

Very impressive and whilst most home owners would get fed up of people photographing their front garden I am guessing that this one accepts that a display like that is going to attract attention and photography! 

Now I know I have seen this before and sure enough I have back in March 2023 in a post that you can see if you click here.

Now strangely enough, in the three and a half years that separate the phots taken nothing of the display appears to have changed apart from a couple of small signs on the gate turning from red to blue!!

Now strangely enough, in the three and a half years that separate the phots taken nothing of the display appears to have changed apart from a couple of small signs on the gate turning from red to blue! 

Now if that were the limit of changes to me I would be a happy man but in that time my hip has gone from mild pain to agony and Mrs W thinks my age has halved - that is my mental age!

 

This should keep me amused for a while!

Having now found myself having an additional week before the next go at having a hip operation I have taken advantage of the time to complete the top coat paint application on the A39 Tortoise.

I have even started to paint up the running wheel rubber tyres which is one of the most boring jobs to do and there is also going to be some green to touch in to.

This should keep me amused for a while!

Woody was left in his gown with no where to go!

 Sometimes things happen! By now I should be into my second day of recovery after a hip operation. I am in pain but not from the operation. Just the normal pain I get from my hip! From all that you may have deduced that things did not go to plan. What actually happened is very sad and I arrived at the right time and was shown to a room where I met the anaesthetist who went through what would be done, then the nurse came in with some forms to fill in and the gown I had to wear. So I changed into the gown and then the surgeon came in and confirmed that I still wanted to go ahead with the operation and confirmed which hip it was ( always reassuring) and marked my leg with an arrow pointing to the hip in question!

At that point he then said that there was a chance there would be no operation that day! Very sadly, in the intervening time between the anaesthetist leaving me and the nurse coming in, the anaesthetist got a phone call that his Mother had died and obviously had to go and deal with that. There was no other anaesthetist available so Woody was left in his gown with no where to go! Luckily, Mrs. Woody had stayed with me so having changed back into my normal clothes it was back home!

I am booked back in for next weekend. I can't deny that I had worked myself up to the day and it has taken a couple of days to work back down again but these things happen and I just need to deal with it!

Mrs. W may take procession of it on the basis that the skeleton would be better company than me!

It is Halloween! Now this may not be the scarcest thing in the World but it did amused me which as Mrs. Woody would tell you is not that difficult to do!

Placed on a village green it is the place where locals sit waiting for a bus so may give them some company during the wait! If they don't find it good company Mrs. W may take procession of it on the basis that the skeleton would be better company than me!

My left hip is to put it bluntly - knackered!

An unusual post! At the time this post appears I will be having or have had an operation for a new hip! My left hip is to put it bluntly - knackered! After several decades of use including over 250,000 miles of cycling (if I were a car I would probably be scrapped at that mileage!) the ball part of my thigh gas worn away and anyone who has had osteoarthritis will know how bad the pain of bone on bone movement can be!

Hopefully all will go well with that and I will be pain free and after a period of recovery able to walk reasonably well again1

As for model making activities? Well those will be put on hold for a while and I did a YouTube video covering what that absence can be like. I already posted it about a week ago but here it is again.

Progress with the A39 Tortoise is even more glacial than usual!

There is a lot going on at WMD at the moment so progress with the A39 Tortoise is even more glacial than usual! However, some top coat paint has been applied.

There is certainly more to apply but a start has been made and for reasons that I will talk about in a day or so it is going to have a long time to dry and harden before anymore gets applied!

A landmark today and gone tomorrow!

Although the area that WMD calls home was not severely hit by the recent storms I was taken aback to see just how powerful the wind was. 

Now that is quite a big tree and the trunk must be three foot or more in diameter but being out in the open it apparently stood no chance. No doubt a bit of a land mark to locals but now gone!

Not sure what the guys in the Transit van are thinking of doing but they will need something a bit bigger to cart that off!

Meanwhile, the second tallest structure in Grantham which is another land mark withstood the storms but wont be intact for much longer as the demolition team are at hand!

They do have more than a Transit van to cart the spoil away though! 

A landmark today and gone tomorrow!

On the right and dwarfing the T34 track links is one A39 link!

144 track links cut from their sprue, cleaned of their mounting points and stored in a jar ready for the day that I get round to building these tracks for the A39 Tortoise.

Just like the vehicle being big, these tracks are big!

On the left, two links from a T34 tank which is no small vehicle. On the right and dwarfing the T34 track links is one A39 link!